Roughly two weeks ago, I moved my computer away from Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Professional. I did this for a couple of very strong reasons:
1. I had already played around with Windows 7 when it was in beta, on my 7 year old “antique” laptop and liked it very much, and
2. As a student I was able to upgrade for less than $50 ($29.95 for Windows 7, $13.00 for an actual disc to be shipped, plus tax.)
I have been learning a few new things about Windows 7 over the past few weeks, and have come to the conclusion that it is quite possibly the best operating system ever created. There are little things about Window 7 that I find that make me think “Wow! That is awesome!”
One of the fun little bits of brilliance that shines in Windows 7 is how to minimize many windows at once. I always have several open windows, and clicking on each one of them and minimizing them one at a time does take some time (especially when I have 31 open programs, like I did last night!)
So, taking those 31 windows I had open as an example, I just had to click on the top border of the window I wanted to really work in, hold the mouse button down and give the window a little shake with the mouse, and the rest of the windows minimized all by themselves! Brilliant!! (Wish I knew about it last night, rather than this morning, but better late than never!)
A big Thanks to Paul Thurrott for that info! And another big Thanks to him for his article about Windows Media Center. I had forgotten all about it.
And it was his article that prompted me to spend most of the day playing around with Media Center and leading me to write this article.
I had used Media Center on my Windows Vista before, but it didn’t really leave me with that great of an impression. In fact, after using it a couple of times, I decided my time was better spent dealing with my media files in the ways I was already used to, such as Zune and iTunes for music and podcasts, VLC media player for the videos I had on my hard drive, and Hulu or the network websites for the TV shows I wanted to catch up on.
With the Media Center that is in Windows 7, I am thinking that I might have to change the way I deal with those files!
But notice that I said MIGHT, not WILL.
I have a few issues with Media Center, some that are faults of the program, and two glaring faults that come from the content providers.
Let’s discuss Media Center first, before I let loose on my opinions of the content providers themselves.
While the interface of Windows Media Center is gorgeous and easy to use, I found that a few of the default settings are pretty annoying. One of them was the noise. Every time you click an option with the mouse, Media Center makes a sound. It got to the point where I thought I was playing a video game, rather than working with an entertainment center.
Fortunately, the sounds can be turned off in the Settings Panel, by clicking on Settings –> General –> Visual and Sound Effects. Simply uncheck the “Play sounds when navigating Windows Media Center” and then click on SAVE and there you go. No more annoying beeps and boops.
Unfortunately, this leads to my first complaint. When navigating through the settings, you are never quite sure exactly where you are. There are no breadcrumbs to show just how deeply you have navigated into menu system. You have 8 categories within the Settings menu, and each of those categories have upwards of 8 choices, and each of those choices can have even more choices or several steps to take in order to finish working in it. And some of those choices do not make any sense.
For example, I was trying to find out how to add a folder for the videos on my media drive. I have some movies and TV shows stored there. So I went to settings and clicked on Media Libraries. I was then given the option of dealing with Music, Pictures, Video, Recorded TV, or Movies. Adding the folders to the Movies section and the Recorded TV section to point to where my files were located was easy. Or so I thought.
Going to the Movies option on the main screen, I found that even though Media Center told me my media library was being updated, and it counted through the 150 or so files I had added, there was nothing in the Movies library.
The same was true of the Recorded TV library.
In order to find out why I couldn’t see my files, I figured I would use the Help system. Except that there isn’t a help system in Media Center itself. You have to leave Media Center and use the Windows Help system to get answers. Fortunately, you can adjust the window size, so you won’t actually have to turn Media Center off to find information.
According to the documentation I found, in order for my TV shows to show up in any place OTHER than the Video Gallery, they would need an extension of .wtv. I have never heard of this file extension before. I can only assume that it is specific to Media Center for when you use it as a DVR, which can only be done if you have a TV tuner in your computer. I don’t.
The Movie files used are more impressive: .mpeg, .mpg, .mpe, .m1v, .mp2, .mpv2, and .vob
But I recorded my files as .avi, because they are smaller on my hard drive than those other files. My files are strictly relegated to the Video Gallery.
So I removed the folders I had added to Recorded TV and Movies, then added those folders to Video. I finally got my TV shows and movies loaded, just into the places I expected them to be, and I decided to look through the Video Gallery and see how that worked. It looks good, and as long as your shows are in their own folders with the show title as the folder name, you should have no issues viewing your shows. And here’s where another issue showed up. I have several titles on my drive, each in their own folder. But Media Center will list only 5 of them, then go to another column to list 5 more. So, I can see 10 folders sitting there by full name (or mostly full, anyway) and then at the right are icons for the next 5. Move your cursor over one of those icons and the whole list shifts to the left so that you can see the next set of titles. GREAT!
Except when you try to go back in the list.
Because there are no icons to the left of the leftmost list column, you have to wait for Media Center to pop up an arrow in order to go back to your other folders. In this case, I wish Microsoft had taken a look at CoverFlow from Apple and done something similar (God, was that hard to write, since I hate pretty much everything else from apple, including iTunes). How nice would it be to simply flow right OR left because there are icons on both sides?
(As a side note: I am sure that Microsoft allowed for touch screens to be able to just slide back and forth with the icons using a swipe of the finger. I don’t know this for sure as I do not have a touch screen computer.)
So, thinking that I might save myself a little aggravation if I could see more of my folders in each column, I went back into the settings.
If you can find some way of changing the icon or text sizes in the settings, please let me know, because I spent a good hour looking for anything that might change that with no results. They scale just fine if you go out of full screen mode, but you cannot change them in any way through the settings that I could find.
And searching for it in the Windows help system only resulted in changes to Windows, not Media Center. Have a feeling you are stuck with the sizes as they are.
My final complaint is something that happened to me twice today, and both times after opening the Windows Help window. Both times after shrinking the MEdia Center Window to get to help, and then maximized it again, Media Center ended up in the background, below my Windows Taskbar, below my Dell Dock, below my Gadgets, yet above my desktop items and any other open windows/programs. To fix it, I had to fully minimize Media Center to just the taskbar, then click on it to open it again. Not sure why this happened, since it only happened when I had the Window Help window open as well. I could easily go from the smaller window to full screen as long as Help was closed, no matter what other programs were open at the time.
At this point you, dear reader, are probably wondering if there was anything at all I liked about Media Center.
The truth is, I like ALL of it! It’s a fabulously brilliant program! And the Internet TV section and Guide section (under TV) are phenomenal! Super easy and intuitive to use, with hundreds of videos available to stream on your desktop, including full episodes of many shows and movies from Netflix! I would recommend everyone use Media Center for their media files and streaming from the net. Yes, I had the issues above with the program. But I think I could be able to live with them.
But here is what I CAN’T live with.
I was testing the streaming of video from the Internet TV option, and I chose to watch a CBS Classic (Melrose Place) and a PBS show (Nova). And here is where those two glaring faults I mentioned earlier come into play.
The first issue is the streaming quality. It was HORRIBLE! CBS and PBS had compressed their files so much to make it “easy” to stream, that they have basically made the files worthless to watch. The audio was great in the shows, but the videos were complete crap!
At first I thought maybe this was a problem with Media Center, so I went to CBS and PBS and streamed the same shows directly from their websites. I encountered the same problems there. Audio sounded great, video was crap!
Now, I am willing to admit that my internet connection may actually be the cause of this issue. It is completely possibly. But I have to tell you, Hulu has great video with the same connection.
But this leads to my next issue: the commercials!
I am NOT anti-commercial. In fact, before what I call the great website crash of 2008, I had a post on my site calling for the networks to offer their shows as free downloads with commercials embedded into them. That post is gone now, but I can easily rewrite it because I believe in what I was saying at the time.
So I don’t have a problem having a streaming TV show interrupted by a commercial break.
What I DO have a problem with is having the show be a good volume, but the ad being so loud that it rattles my speakers! It got to a point where I kept my mouse pointer over the mute button in Media Center, watching the streaming bar so that I could be prepared for the commercial break.
And it wasn’t just CBS. PBS only has a commercial at the beginning of the episode, but even that was so loud I thought I was going to blow out my speakers.
Media content providers need to find some way to make the commercials the same sound level as the videos, pure and simple. We, as consumers of their products, want to be able to just sit back and enjoy what we’re watching (or listening to, as far as audio media goes). We don’t want to be jumping out of our skins every time a commercial comes on during a show, even if that means that the shows audio has to be super loud as well. We can always turn the volume down to a comfortable level. But constantly having to move the volume down for a commercial and then back up to hear the show is a destruction of our ability to enjoy that show.
And the more people who turn their backs on streaming media because of these obnoxiously loud commercials, the more willing the media providers are going to be to declare streaming a lost cause and stop doing it.
Of course, maybe that’s what big media wants to do anyway, so maybe that’s why they blast the commercial volume.
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