How to move the Netflix & Internet TV 7MC start menu icons

Using Media Center Studio you can edit the Media Center Start Menu strips and icons. If you want to move the new Netflix and Internet TV icons to a custom menu strip you can!

Create a new custom menu or use an existing custom menu such as the one My Movies creates.

In this case I just created a new custom menu called custom menu.

Then move Promo (Movies1) for Netflix and Promo (Browse TV) for Internet TV to your custom menu strip. Save the changes in Media Center Studio.

Open Media Center and the Netflix and Internet TV icons should now appear on your custom menu strip.

Thanks to Advent for the tip about using the promo tiles.

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse , Media Center , How-to , Media Center Studio , Netflix , Internet TV

Media Center Studio

One of my favorite Media Center related applications has to be Media Center Studio which is the replacement of MC Menu Mender. Media Center Studio allows you to customize your Media Center setup by adding new themes and editing the Media Center start menu. The application is free and is developed by Advent from the Australian Media Center Community forums. You can download Media Center Studio from the website here.

Overview:

Media Center Studio is a free application for Windows Vista and Windows 7 that enables you to customize Windows Media Center. It is the successor of MC Menu Mender, bringing it up to date for Windows 7 and adding support for theme application and editing.

Features:

• Edit your start menu - rearrange or disable native menu items
• Create your own menu strips, and your own items to go in them
• Monitors your application and returns to Media Center when it exits
• Set up a button on your remote to exit your application
• Create menu items that take you to native Media Center pages, or start media
• Apply themes to Media Center
• Create new themes or edit existing ones

Themes:

Start Menu:

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse , story , Media Center , Media Center Studio

7MC Netflix – Screen shots

WThe new Netflix application has changed from the Vista version and looks more integrated in to the Windows 7 Media Center overall style with the overlays.

Also there are 13 genre pivots along the top, I seem to think this is more than was visible in Vista? Search looks the same to me.

Click the images for larger views:

7MC new Internet TV with wait for it…. Flash!

I’ve just installed the new update for Internet TV which has replaced Internet TV beta 2 in Windows 7 Media Center and it’s a brand new UI and looks pretty slick, one massive surprise is that I was prompted to install an additional update for flash support inside Media Center, I’m still in shock lol and very excited I never expected to ever see native Flash support in Media Center.

That’s the good news the bad news is that Internet TV is now locked down again and cannot be accessed by any old region as was the case with Internet TV beta 2 on the RTM.

Click the images for larger views of them:

OMG Flash inside of Media Center, Christmas has come earlier this year!

Native Flash playback inside Internet TV - 7MC.

Brought to you by CW Kid

Netflix released for Windows 7 Media Center

Looks like Netflix has been pushed out for 7MC, my machine has just picked up the icon and I was able to install the Netflix add-in software.

MCE Plugin’s index

I just stumbled across this on the Green Button forums and thought it was well worth a mention. A TGB user called JonL has created a newly updated index / list of MCE plugin’s and related utilities.

I can imagine it must have took some time to do but it’s great to see a new list being managed and maintained.

You can check out the index on theHTPC.net here

My Movies 3.0 – It’s finished!

My Movies 3.0 is done and dusted it’s shipped already to the custom installers yesterday and is due for public release on October 22nd.

I was involved with the beta testing and if you haven’t seen me on the Green Button forums for a while, I’ve been hanging out over at the My Movies forums for the last few weeks instead.

Congratulations to Brian the developer of My Movies, I think we are all very pleased with how My Movies 3.0 has shaped up and he’s not finished yet, the development cycle will continue with My Movies 3.1 or 3.5 on the horizon. So lets hope our wish list items make it!

ASRock NetTop packs a punch!

On the bench today we have an ASRock NetTop, I have the ION 330 BD model.

Product Home page

Intel^® Atom™ 330 (Dual-Core CPU)

NVIDIA^® ION™ graphics processor

BD combo

After disappointing results with a Zotac ION motherboard I had high hopes for this little machine and I have to say it seems to be spot on. I gave it a fairly quick grilling running Windows 7 RTM with My Movies 3.0 PR11, PowerDVD9 Build 2201 with the Shark007 Seven Codec pack.

Supports 1080P video playback and it played my Blu-ray rips and MKV’s in Windows 7 Media Center / PowerDVD 9 without even breaking a sweat, the CPU usage always remained low around 10% peaking at maybe 17%

ASRock NetTop next to an Acer One NetBook.

This unit is not fan less but is pretty quiet and would be ideal for bedroom usage. Sporting Digital Optical (SPDIF), Analog audio jacks x3, Gigabit NIC, USB 2.0 X6, HDMI, VGA.

You can see just how small the NetTop is when compared to the diNovo Mini keyboard from Logitech.

I need to do some more testing but at first look this little NetTop is the small form factor Media Center PC we have been waiting for, overall I’m very impressed with it so far.

Intel finally release Windows 7 graphics drivers

I’ve just noticed on the Intel downloads website that they now have drivers listed for Windows 7. This is the first time I have seen this and I was previously using the Vista drivers for Windows 7.

I’ve just updated my graphics drivers for the Intel G45 express chipset on my motherboard. Not sure what took Intel so long to get these drivers out? But if you are running with an Intel graphics based system you might want to head over to their download site and update your drivers if you haven’t already.

The new drivers I downloaded today for my system have a date stamp of the 19/08/2009 version 15.15.4.1872. Or if your American 08/19/2009.

Part 2: My Movies for Windows Home Server

In part one we looked at the My Movies for WHS installation and configuration, now we need to install the My Movies client software on your VMC PC so you can manage your movie collection.

You can download the My Movies Client from the download page here.

Make sure you get the My Movies Client Edition for either x86 or x64 and not the My Movies Server and Client Edition.

My Movies Client installation

Once you have installed the software launch the My Movies Collection Management program. You should be prompted to enter the server name you want to connect to. Enter the name of your WHS box.

Note: I already had the My Movies Server and Client Edition installed on my Vista PC, so first I had to remove it from add/remove programs, I also removed all the MS SQL components as these were no longer required as they are now hosted on the WHS. And then just installed the My Movies Client Edition.

Once in the Collection Management program, my movie titles were then all listed on the left hand side. If you are doing a refresh installation with no previous database having been restored then you will see no titles listed here until some new ones have been added.

Setup Folder Monitoring

Select the Configure menu and then Options. Select Folder Monitoring. In here you add the paths to the folders you would like My Movies to Monitor.

Also select an Operating Type and Operating Location. I personally normally choose Confirmative in Collection Manager. But you may want the notifications to appear in Media Center when new titles are added, so you would change the Operating Location to Media Center.

My Movies will then auto detect the movies in the monitored folders and try it’s best to add a matching title in to the database.

I find that it is not always 100% accurate which is why I set it to Confirmative, so it asks me first before just adding an incorrect title.

I will now briefly run through adding a new movie title manually, you may do this if you are not using folder monitoring or you want to add titles for some of your movies that have not been detected.

Click the Title pull down menu and select Add Title or just click the Add Titles button the menu bar.

Go to the By Title tab enter the name of the movie or if you have the original disk you could use the By Barcode tab, select the country, I normally leave it on United States and select the type, DVD or Blu-ray etc. Then click on the search button.

Choose a title from the search results and click Add Online

Then browse to the folder where this movie is stored.

Once it has been added click Add to Owned for keeps button.

Note: I always use UNC paths rather than local ones like D:\Movies

For example: \\WHS\\Movies\HD\Gladiator

The Progress is then shown as My Movies downloads the information and adds the title to your database.

The title is then added.

Tip: Click the Disc(s) button you may find it has added more than one disk if the movie was listed as a two disk edition, when you only wanted one as you don’t have the second disk on your system. You can simply remove the second disk and save the title.

My Movies in Media Center

This is the My Movies version 2 user interface in Media Center, it is looking dated now as it’s HTML based and not a native MCML Media Center application, especially when compared to the likes of Media Browser.

However I am hoping that the new My Movies version 3 due for beta release in September, will be a suitable replacement to Media Browser as it goes commercial, I know I would prefer to use My Movies if I can.

Disk ripping process on the WHS

Audio CD’s:

After installing AnyDVD HD on the WHS, I inserted an Audio CD. I could see that the light on the DVD Drive was flashing away and I could hear it had spun up. After a few minutes the CD was ejected.

On my PC, I then browsed to the folder I had told My Movies for WHS to rip my audio CD’s to and in there I could see that it had created a folder for this artist with a sub folder with the albums name. In here I had WMA files and even a 500x500 resolution folder.jpg for the front cover sweet! This particular CD was 171 MB in file size that’s using WMA Lossless.

I then went in to my music library in Media Center but I could not see the new album. So I opened WMP11 and refreshed the library to add the album. My newly ripped album then appeared in WMP11/VMC. Man that was pretty simple. I guess if I was more patient the album would have eventually just appeared in Media Center of it’s own accord.

My Music Disc Copier in the WHS Console - Completed rip status Done.

DVD / Blu-ray / HDDVD:

I then dug out a DVD movie (The Big Lebowski) and inserted the disk in to the DVD drive on the WHS machine.

In the WHS Console you can go to the My Movies Disc Copier to see what’s happening.

I have to say I am pretty impressed with the ripping features in My Movies for WHS, I won’t be able to test a Blu-ray disk however as I don’t have a Blu-ray drive on the WHS box. But it makes it very easy for any family member to insert a disk in to the WHS and add it to the collection and for it to appear in Media Center.

Two things I would like to see however, support for ripping DVD’s to DVR-MS and the option to specify individual shared folders for DVD and Blu-ray. Rather than only being able to choose one folder for both.

Summary

I really like My Movies for Windows Home Server. I think if you already have a WHS in the house and you are also a Media Center user, it seems a no brainer to also have the My Movies database installed on the WHS for central access by all HTPC clients and to also take advantage of those easy to use ripping features. So simple anyone in the house can add content to the system.

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse”, Media Center”, Story”, My Movies for Windows Home Server”