Windows 7 Media Center Customization Handbook

Customize and Enhance W7MC

RSVR85
Rich Robinson — Microsoft MVP
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© 2009 Windows Guides | mintywhite.com. All rights reserved. Contents
Windows 7 Media Center Customization Handbook

If this guide is distributed it is furnished under license and may be used or copied only in accordance with
the terms of such license. Except as permitted by any such license, no part of this guide may be Introduction ......................................................................... 2
reproduced. This guide may be stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise. Please note that the content in this guide is protected
under copyright law.
Notational Conventions ...................................................... 2
Mintywhite will not be responsible for damages to your computer, software, or data resulting from use of
information contained in this document.
Customization 101 ............................................................ 2
The content of this guide is furnished for informational use only, is subject to change without notice, and
should not be construed as a commitment by Windows Guides. Neither Windows Guides nor Microsoft Required Downloads ............................................................. 3
Corp. assume responsibility or liability for any errors or inaccuracies that may appear in the informational
content contained in this guide nor for any damages resulting from use of the information contained Movie Organization ............................................................... 4
herein.
Please remember that existing artwork or images that you may want to include in your project may be Join Two-Part Movies ......................................................... 5
protected under copyright law. The unauthorized incorporation of such material into your new work could
be a violation of the rights of the copyright owner. Please be sure to obtain any permission required from Get MetaData for Your Movies ............................................ 5
the copyright owner.
mintywhite, Windows Guides, and the Windows Guides logo are trademarks of mintywhite.com Configure Media Browser ...................................................... 9
Microsoft, Windows and Office are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. All other trademarks are the
property of their respective owners. Set up Actor Images ..........................................................10
Add Media Browser to W7MC Start Menu ............................11
Change Media Browser Icon in Startup Menu ......................14
About the Authors
Add Custom Genre Icons to Media Browser ........................15
Speed Up Media Browser Using USB Flash Drive ..................15
RSVR85 is a tech enthusiast with a passion for tweaking and
improving PCs. RSVR85 is a moderator in Windows Forums and Hide the Default Movie Strip .................................................17
a writer for Windows Guides. Change W7MC Background...................................................18
What Next? ..........................................................................19
Rich Robinson is the author and creator of Windows Guides, About this Handbook ...........................................................19
Windows Forums, and MyWindowsPC. Rich is a Microsoft MVP in
the Desktop Experience category and authored Windows 7 –The
Pocket Guide, Windows Vista – The Pocket Guide, Windows
Vista – Customization Manual, the PC Security Handbook, and
the PC Maintenance handbook.

Download more free books.

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Introduction
This handbook is compiled from numerous Windows Media
Center tutorials written on mintywhite.com. Changes to system
protected files are required to accomplish the entirety of the
guide and should be approached cautiously.
I strongly recommend you backup any system files you intend
on changing to a "backup" folder for later restoration.
Throughout this handbook, I'll refer to methods used for .avi
movie files. Where amendments to the guide are needed for
other movie files, this icon will be displayed.
The purpose of this handbook is not to define the ultimate
solution; its purpose is to give you simple, unbiased advice on
what I’ve found to be the best options out there. If you have
any questions about PC customization or PCs in general, you
can head to Windows Forums where you’ll find friendly,
knowledgeable members who are happy to assist in your
learning. If you disagree with anything in this handbook, please
join us also and share your solutions.
It is not necessary to complete the handbook from start to
finish. Please read through the contents page and decide what
you want to do with your Windows Media Center.
Please note: Windows Media Center is available in the Home
Premium, Professional, and Ultimate editions of Windows 7.
Notational Conventions
In this handbook, I use these notational conventions:
Italic: Text from the current dialogue you are working with.
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Bold: the name of a keyboard key.
Italic bold: something you type as shown, e.g., regedit. Unless
otherwise specified, you can use uppercase or lowercase
letters.
Click: move the cursor to the referenced item and press the left
mouse button.
Press: press a keyboard key.
Select: choose from a list.
Blue Links: Links to external websites.
Customization 101
Many terms in this handbook may be new to you; I make every
effort to explain things in a simple manner that is easy to
digest. Before we begin with solutions, I present some key
terms and phrases that will assist you as you work your way
through the rest of this handbook. These phrases are
commonly used in conversation and in online discussion
forums, but it’s hard to know exactly what they mean.
Uninstall – To remove a program from your computer so that it
no longer occupies space on your hard drive and cannot be
used anymore. Uninstallation includes deletion of program
files, registry entries, associations, supporting libraries, user
data, plugins, extensions, and other features specific to a
program.
Registry – A control center for your computer. Windows
settings, individual program settings, and other important
configuration information are stored here.
Now you have your jargon set straight, you can begin
customizing Windows 7 Media Center.
A Taster of Things to Come!
Here's a few screenshots of Windows 7 Media Center to “wet
your whistle.”

Required Downloads

Before we start with this guide, you'll need to start a few

downloads.

1. Media Browser - Media Browser (MB) is a free media

aggregator plug-in for Media Centre that takes your recorded,
digital, or ripped media and presents it in a simple, easy to use
interface. This really is the best plug-in for W7MC (in my
opinion).

2. Restorator 2007 (Free Version) - Restorator is an award-

winning utility to edit windows resources in applications and
their components, e.g. files with .exe, .dll, .res, .rc, .dcr,
extensions

3. XML Notepad 2007 - XML Notepad 2007 provides a simple

intuitive user interface for browsing and editing XML

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documents. Notepad can be used as an alternative but I Movie Organization
definitely recommend XML Notepad for the job.

4. meta <browser/> - meta<browser/> is an all-in-one

First things first, let’s organise our movies. You’re going to
solution to retrieve metadata for Movies and TV shows through
need to have your movie collection regimented if this guide is
the available APIs of themoviedb.org (TMDb) and thetvdb.com
to succeed. You can do it manually, or use this batch file. Either
(TVDb).
way, each movie must be in its own folder.
5. WMCCC - This wizard can create new custom start menu
So, the movie, Get Smart (2008) for example would need to
strips for Windows Media Centre (Vista/Windows7) and
look like:
populate them with registered extra programs. It's also
possible to delete the strips. J:\DVD\Comedy\Get Smart (2008)\Get Smart (2008).avi

6. Hide Strips - Hide Media Center Menu Strips has the ability
to hide native & custom strips in the start menu area of W7MC.
Note that this program hides them and does not delete them.

7. OABSoftware MCE Mail - With MCE Mail you can read your e-
mails and write e-mails to others, on your Media Centre TV.

MCE Mail supports POP3 servers for receiving e-mails and SMTP
servers for sending e-mails.

8. Mencoder - With mencoder you can join two-part movies

using a simple command line.

9. This Batch File - Rich wrote this batch file for us. If you have
your movie files 'loose' then this file will put each movie into a I’ve found through trial and error that always stating the year in
folder and rename the folder according to the movies name. brackets (parenthesis) after the movie title helps metadata
Please view the README file included in the zip file. grabbers do the job efficiently.

You’ll need to organise every single movie you want included in

Media Browser (MB) in this way. If you have a large movie
collection, it’s also worth putting the movie folders into genre
categories.

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Join Two-Part Movies mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy -noodml -o “joined.avi” “1.avi”
“2.avi”
If you have two part movie, you should join them as one. Grab
the copy of Mencoder you downloaded earlier.

Copy mencoder.exe into the folder with the movies you wish to
‘join’. Make sure that each part of the movie is correctly
labelled “1” & “2”. Open a command prompt window in that
folder (Shift & Right Click on the movie folder.)

Get MetaData for Your Movies

There are a lot of tools out there for grabbing MetaData for
movies. My favourite is meta<browser/>. Using
meta<browser/> can take some getting used to and you’ll
probably have to practice a little with it, the results are most
definitely worth it though. meta<browser/> will download
multiple DVD covers, backdrops, banners, episode thumbs,
ratings, synopsis and actor images. You name it,
meta<browser/> has it covered.

To get started, open up meta<browser/> and click Options, at

the bottom left of the window.

Type this command into the command prompt and press enter;

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Click Add a new location at the top right of the new window &
choose your movie folder. Be sure to press Enter after each
choice. Click Save when all of the movie folders you need have
been added.

Under Search options you can set which folders and which file
extensions are valid.

It's recommended to have the FileSystemWatcher checked on

under Folder Monitoring for file systems Windows 2000 and
above.

To start acquiring actor images, we must setup a temporary

folder for them. At the bottom of the main windows click Refresh List and your
movies will start to populate in the left hand pane.
Create a folder anywhere you like named ImagesByName . Copy
the path of the ImagesByName folder into the ImagesByName Entries marked red have missing or incomplete MetaData
folder location field in meta<browser/>. This temporary folder information.
will remain so until Media Browser is installed. If you move the
temporary ImagesByname folder, make sure you update the
location field in meta<browser/> options.

Be sure to click Save after any changes.

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Click on a movie you want to process and click on Fetch Movie
MetaData. meta<browser/> will then begin to download all the
information you need. You can choose from multiple
backdrops, banners & DVD covers.

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Click Save MetaData when you're happy with the MetaData. meta<browser/> to practice its different functions and find
Your film folder should look something similar to this once which way suits you best
you’ve downloaded and saved the changes. (You may have to
show hidden files/folders.)
Configure Media Browser
To show hidden files and folders:

1. Open Windows Explorer (Winkey+E.)
2. Press ALT, click Tools > Folder Options.
3. Click the View tab.
4. Scroll down and select Show hidden files and folders.
Now all of your movies have the correct MetaData and are
nicely organised, it's time for the good bits!
I'll assume you already have Media Browser (MB for short from
now on!) downloaded and already installed.

1. Start the Media Browser Configuration Wizard.

2. Click advanced to open all of the extra option tabs.
3. Click Add to start browsing for folders to add to MB.

After you’ve added your first folder, you’ll see that you can
specify more than one location for that particular media. e.g.
I’ve chosen my DVD collection which is on H:\ I may have
another folder on C:\ that I also want to add to DVD to MB.
Treat this as you would the new library function in Windows 7.

As previously mentioned, meta <browser/> is a little tricky to

get to grips with at first; I advise starting with small folders or
individual movies. If you find you’ve messed up, don’t panic!

Go to the movie folder on your HDD, delete everything apart

from the actual movie and try again.

There are several ways to process your movies and get

MetaData with meta<browser/>. I’m giving the simplest
example. You may wish to experiment, by copying a folder of
movies to a different location and running through

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 Media Browser supports podcasts, multiple plugins, the ability
to play a movie from a mounted ISO, and additions of media
Once you have all of your folders added, you’ll probably want types for external players. Have a play around with the display
to apply images to them. Go here for an excellent collection of tab in particular.
Movie Genre icons. deviantart.com is also one of my favourite
places to visit for icons.
Set up Actor Images
Click on the folder you wish to change, click on Change Image, By default, MB doesn't add an ImagesByName folder to its
navigate to the image of your choice and click Open. directory (in C:\ProgramData). Remember that temporary folder
you created earlier? We're going to need it now. Make sure that
MB will automatically save any changes made to the
configuration wizard. hidden file and folders are set to show before you go any
further.

Navigate to:

C:\ProgramData\MediaBrowser
(or type % programdata% \MediaBrowser into any Explorer
window)

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and move the temporary ImagesByName folder to the MB
folder.
Be sure to update this location in the options menu in
meta<browser/>
Double check the ImagesByName folder by going through a few
folders inside and making sure that the actors name is the
folder name and the actor image inside is name folder.
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Add Media Browser to W7MC Start Menu
If the MB icon doesn't appear in a new strip in the start menu in
Media Centre, (with some builds of MB it doesn't) you'll have to
create a new strip. To do this, run the WMCCC program
mentioned in Required Downloads and click on Create a new
start menu strip > Next.
Name and Title your custom strip. You won’t be able to name it
Movies ; WMCCC returns an error if this is attempted.
Click Next.
Select media browser from the list of available programs and If you add more than one program to the strip, set the program
click Next. order and click Next.

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If you have more than one strip already installed, choose the Click Finish to…..well.....you know!
start menu strip order and hit Next.

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Change Media Browser Icon in Startup Menu Right click on STARTMENU.QUICKLINK.MOVIES.FOCUS.PNG, go
to Extract… > Extract as
This is a good one for those of you who aren’t too keen on “STARTMENU.QUICKLINK.MOVIES.FOCUS.PNG” and save the
MB’s default icon. image to desktop.
We’re going to change it to the default movie icon that W7MC
displays. You can of course change the icon to whatever you
like.

Locate ehres.dll located in:

C:\Windows\ehome
(or type % windir% \ehome into any Windows Explorer window.)

When you have found it, take ownership of it, make a copy of it
to the desktop and rename it ehres BACKUP.dll .

Place the backup in your backup folder.

Next, is to open ehres.dll with Restorator 2007.
In the left hand pane, expand RCData and find
STARTMENU.QUICKLINK.MOVIES.FOCUS.PNG you should see the
same icon as I have below.
Now we have our default movie image extracted and saved to
desktop. Navigate to:
C:\Program Files\MediaBrowser\MediaBrowser
(or type % programfiles%\MediaBrowser\MediaBrowser in
any Windows Explorer window)

Locate the PNG image called Application and rename it

Application BACKUP. Move the backup PNG into your backup
folder you created earlier.

Finally, move the extracted default WMC movie icon from the
desktop and into:

C:\Program Files\MediaBrowser\MediaBrowser

and rename it Application.

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 Create a new folder in ImagesByName and name it the title of
your genre. (i.e. Action , Comedy )

Put your genre icon into the folder and name it folder. (not
folder.jpg, just folder)

That's it!

Add Custom Genre Icons to Media Browser

Earlier on I spoke about how important it was to organise your
movies. If you have a large collection of movies, it's also worth
putting them into genre categories. Here you'll learn how to
add custom icons to those genres in MB.

All we have to do is mod the ImagesByName folder slightly.
Open up an Explorer Window and navigate to
C:\ProgramData\MediaBrowser\ImagesByName
(or type % programdata% \MediaBrowser\ImagesByName in
any Windows Explorer window).
Speed Up Media Browser Using USB Flash Drive
I find that MB can take a while to load all of the DVD covers &
backdrops for the entire movie library.
Using a USB Flash Drive should eliminate this problem as
they’re generally a lot quicker than your hard drive. Anything

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that’s considered fast enough for ReadyBoost should suffice for
this.

Start by formatting your USB Flash Drive to FAT32. (You can do

this by right clicking the USB Drive and clicking Format...
Choose FAT32 from the File System drop down menu in the
next window.)

You need to make sure that Hidden Files & Folders are set to
show.

Then navigate to C:\ProgramData

(or type % programdata% into any Explorer window)

Cut or Copy the MediaBrowser folder to your Flash Drive.

Delete MediaBrowser from C:\ProgramData if you copied.

Open a command prompt (WinKey+R > cmd) and type these

commands in, hitting enter after each one;

cd C:\ProgramData (Change C:\ to your ProgramData drive)

mklink /j MediaBrowser X:\MediaBrowser (Change X to your

Flash drive)

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You’ll see a message after it’s finished; Junction created for
MediaBrowser <<===>> X:\MediaBrowser

Close the command prompt.

If you navigate back to C:\ProgramData you’ll see that a

MediaBrowser folder is present with a shortcut overlay arrow on
it. Don’t delete this folder.

Hide the Default Movie Strip

Now you have MB installed and probably fell in love with it,
there's little need for the default movie strip in W7MC. Here
you'll learn how to hide the default strip so you just have the
MB strip!

Install and run the Hide Strips program (#6. Required

Downloads)
Uncheck the same options as last time. You’ll notice under All
Make sure you open up under the Per User tab. Users your custom strip can be seen. Click Save & Exit when
you’re finished.
Uncheck Movies and whatever else you want to hide. Click Save.
Then move across to the All Users tab.

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 Go here to convert your jpg images into png (png must be used
for this guide)

First up you’ll need to take ownership of ehres.dll under

C:\Windows\ehome (or type %windir% \ehome in any Explorer
window)

Open up ehres.dll in Restorator 2007, in the left pane navigate

to; RCData\COMMON.ANIMATED.BACKGROUND.PNG

In the right pane you'll see the default background W7MC

displays.

Right click on COMMON.ANIMATED.BACKGROUND.PNG and go

to extract…>extract as
“COMMON.ANIMATED.BACKGROUND.PNG”

Using this program does not delete the strip, it hides it. To
show the default strip re-check movies.

Change W7MC Background

One of the most obvious changes you’ll notice from "A Taster
Of Things To Come" is the changes in the background W7MC
displays.

Rich has made a huge collection of wallpapers. Have a browse

through them and pick new wallpaper for Media Centre.

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Save the .png to the desktop. What Next?
Right click COMMON.ANIMATED.BACKGROUND.PNG again, but
this time, go to Assign…>Assign To…
Now you’ve read this book, I recommend you ensure you’ve
made changes to ensure your system is optimized. Refer to this
book frequently for reminders of what to do when cleaning
your PC; you will soon find PC optimization is a habit and you
are familiar enough with it to help friends and family with their
PCs. After you’ve done this, I encourage you to visit Windows
Guides and learn other ways to improve your PC.

About this Handbook

This handbook is delivered free by Windows Guides.

RSVR85 is a moderator in Windows Forums and a writer for

Windows Guides.

Rich Robinson is a Microsoft MVP in the Desktop Experience

category; this book is not affiliated with Microsoft. Get more
books.

Choose your preferred background which must be .png. Any

resolution should be OK.

Save ehres.dll and close Restorator.

Now when you open up W7MC your new background should be

displayed!!

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