We can enjoy a lot if we have our favorite colors on the desktop. Windows provides a lot of options with which we can customize to get great usage experience. “Windows Vista Media Center” also has many options to give it the look we like. TechFlag has 10 methods to give your “Windows Vista Media Center” a exciting look.
Method: 1
My Movies: It is a free add-on which adds new movies to “Windows Media Center library” automatically when you add them in your PC. It also downloads the latest information about your favorite movies from internet with the help of various web services about genre, actor, movie reviews and latest gossip. It is very simple to use just click here to download and install it. It can automatically get integrated with “Windows Vista Media Center”.
Method: 2
Vista Codec Packs: This is a simple Codec which can play almost all formats thus you need not depend on any other player for rare formats. The installation is also very simple. There are two versions of this codes 32 bit and 64 bit, you can choose with the OS you use.
Method: 3
Remove ‘Sample Music / Sample Videos / Sample Photos’ folders’: Many users feel that these folders are useless and if you try to remove they refuse. So you need some different idea to remove them.
All you have to do is to delete the following folders permanently
c:\users\public\public pictures\sample pictures
c:\users\public\public videos\sample videos
c:\users\public\public music\sample music
Method: 4
Extra Visualizations: The default “Media Center visualizations” are not good to look at, you can get attractive visualizations without adding software by just editing the registry which has to be done with care.
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First make sure “Windows Media Center” is not running.
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Go to “Start Menu”-> “Run” and type “regedit.exe” in RUN dialog box and then and press “Enter”. With this you can open “Registry Editor”.
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Navigate to following registry subkey: “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\DvdSettings”.
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In the right pane right-click on “ShowGallery” and select “Modify”.
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Delete the contents that appear in the Value data box, type “Gallery” in the Value data box, and then click “OK”.
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Exit Registry Editor.
Method: 5
Download some cool “Visualizations” from “Microsoft Website”.
Method: 6
Yougle: Youtube is no doubt the ultimate source for all types of videos. With “Yougle” you can watch videos form “Youtube”, “Google Video”, “DivX Stage 6”, “Daily Motion” and “WWITV videos” with “Windows Vista Media Center”.
Method: 7
Full Screen Mode: You can open “Media Center” in full screen mode, if have a big screen it’s can impress you the best.
1. Right click on the shortcut of “Windows Vista Media Center” and select “Properties”.
2. In the target link you can find “……\ehome\ehshell.exe”.
3. Change this to “\ehome\ehshell.exe /mediamode”. Now “Windows Vista Media Center” will start in full screen mode.
Method: 8
Add Custom Strips: Media Center Menu Customizer lets you add your own custom icon strips to Media Center, or extra buttons to existing strips.
Method: 9
mceWeather: It may not be useful every time but still it look good to have it on your screen. This plug-in provides you with weather information all over the world; you can also see the satellite image of your country. Click here to grab MceWeather.
Method: 10
Netflix is a popular tool known for movies you can now have it on Media Center. Click here to download.
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Please note that My Movies 3 has been released. My movies was working but you needed to click on my movies to connect back into the media center. This is all fixed with My movies 3. The only down on My movies 3 it cost you at least $50 Us. I bought the new version and think it is realy good. Much faster then the old version. easy to read. still having the same features. Great news