DVR / HTPC
If you are a Media Center user who doesn't use all of the menu strips in Media Center, here a easy way to quickly hide the strips you don't want or need. The aptly named Hide Menu Strips app come courtesy of Mikinho, who also created YAMMM and the Mount Image apps for Media Center.
The app is portable and pretty straightforward. Simply run the .exe and check or uncheck the boxes to hide / show menu strips. You will, however, need to run as an administrator to configure it for All Users. A great way to streamline your Windows Media Center by removing unwanted strips.
Read my full post How to Geek or download it and try it out for yourself.
One of Media Center's shortcomings is the lack of native support for metadata management. Enter Media Center Master. This free application can be configured to pull cover art and other metadata, such as movie synopsis, director info, etc directly from the Internet to be displayed in your native Movie Library. MCM will also pull metadata for TV shows and you can also use it in conjunction with MediaBrowser.
Read the full Media Center Master post over at How to Geek.
As a Media Center enthusiast I found this article from GeekTonic very interesting. The article talks about Paul Thurott's recent way-too-early preview of Windows 8, in which Thurott indicates Microsoft may be moving away from TV tuner card support since recent trends have entertainment shifting more towards the web and web based applications.
If you are a Boxee user you already know that you can search for videos from all over the Web, watch them, or add them to your queue for later viewing. What if while you are at work doing a little browsing over your "lunch hour" and you come across a hilarious video you want to check out later? You could jot it down, email yourself the link, or try to remember it later? With the Boxee Bookmarklet, you can add that video to your Boxee queue instantly with the click of a button.
Some Metadata managing apps like Media Center Master and YAMMM require your movie folders to be in individual (and correctly named) folders so that they can properly store metadata and cover art. Even the default Media Center library works on the same principal. So what the heck do you do if you have a large collection of movie files in a single directory? File2Folder to the rescue. This handy little application will take each movie file, create an identically named folder, and move the movie file into that folder. A huge time saver to say the least.
Check out my full write up at How to Geek or download File2Folder and have a go yourself.
If you use Windows Media Center on a dual monitor or multi-monitor system you may be aware that WMC "traps" the mouse so that you cannot work on the other monitor. This is a big annoyance for Media Center users who enjoy a little entertainment while browsing the web or doing a little work. Fortunately there is a little app called the Maxifier that eliminates this "trapping" and let's you run Media Center in full screen mode on any monitor. It also offers additional options and customizable hot keys. There is a stable version (1.4) for Vista Media Center and a Beta version (1.5) for Windows 7.
This is a really simple little app that solves a big annoyance for many Media Center users. You can download it and give it a whirl here, or read my full write up on The Maxifier at How-To Geek.
Boxee is one of the nicer HTPC solutions this side of Windows Media Center. It's not perfect by any means, but It has been slowly and surely making improvements over the last several months. It's latest version release (0.9.21.11487) features greatly improved media identification. Identifying media, movies in this case, has gone from rather clunky, to somewhat refined in a short period of time. Not only has the initial identification improved, but fixing errors and unknown files is super easy.
Boxee uses IMDB to pull it's movie information and cover art. As long as you have your movie files named properly based on IMDB standards, you're pretty much half way there.
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