#WINDOWS XP MEDIA CENTER SOFTWARE PC#
#WINDOWS XP MEDIA CENTER SOFTWARE TV#
#WINDOWS XP MEDIA CENTER SOFTWARE WINDOWS#

Files stored in the 'My Music' folder can be selected with the MCE remote control, and, if you are or have been connected to the Internet, will play while the album cover is shown on the computer screen. Windows XP MCE can, of course, play music. It's probably my favourite of the crop, and it shows very clearly one possible direction entertainment computers are going in.Д«ut there's a lot more about MCE that's of interest to musicians and listeners -some of which is probably an unintentional side benefit of having a computer at the centre of your living room. Those were the days, and I wonder if in 50 years time we will look back with the same fondness at machines such as this little wonder I've seen from Elonex - a very stylish MCE computer that has the motherboard built into the back of the screen. If you need a comparison I'd say that it's the multimedia equivalent of what used to be called a 'music centre' and before that a 'radiogram'. This stuff is all very well, and has probably, in one giant step, so to speak, introduced a completely new category of consumer electronics device. It's quite clear that Microsoft have spent a lot of time working on getting this right, which is understandable when you consider that the people MCE is aimed at may well be computer neophytes, or, people, like me, who like to forget about the technicalities of computers when they are relaxing.

#WINDOWS XP MEDIA CENTER SOFTWARE PC#

MCE turns your PC into a fully functional personal video recorder with all the tricks like pausing live television, a free Electronic Program Guide (EPG) and automatically recording every program in a series. This is where computer flexibility leaves hard-wired traditional domestic video clutter behind. It has to, in fact, given the astonishingly low price of CRT-based televisions in the shops at the moment!

#WINDOWS XP MEDIA CENTER SOFTWARE TV#

Well, most people would want to use the TV functionality, which does more than turn your computer into a TV. (One of the UK computer manufacturers that has signed up to produce MCE machines, Evesham, actually offers the neatest solution for watching digital terrestrial TV: they have a Freeview decoder built right into the computer. Not only is there a long list of Freeview-type set top boxes, each with its own infra-red codes, but, in the unlikely event that your box isn't in the list, MCE guides you through the process of teaching it the infra-red commands that your particular box uses. In fact, the level of attention to detail is impressive. Microsoft has used the extra year to integrate MCE with both analogue and digital terrestrial systems in the UK, and it now works pretty seamlessly with our television standards. The reason it hasn't been available over here until now is a technical one: it didn't work with our digital TV systems. It's sold pretty well over there, to the extent that it's probably one of Microsoft's more significant revenue earners. The Americans have had Media Centre Edition for a year now. Typically, what you're more likely to want to do is watch television, and this is where MCE really takes off. Of course, the very last thing you would want to do as you recline on your settee is look at spreadsheets and databases. It's a product that lets you use your PC as an entertainment device in the context of your living room, rather than in an office, on a desk. That domestic arrangement is the key to understanding MCE. That all changes when you realise that it's the first consumer-oriented operating system to be bundled with an infra-red remote control! Press the green button in the middle and the whole interface changes into a simplified schema of large menus that you can read while you're sitting on the sofa, across the room from the PC.

#WINDOWS XP MEDIA CENTER SOFTWARE WINDOWS#

And, when you first boot it up, it looks exactly like Windows XP. It's a superset of the operating system that most PC users are either running now or migrating to at some point in the future. Media Center Edition is a special edition of Windows XP: that's all. I would say, though, that I run an ethical policy, which is that I don't promote products that I don't think are worthy of promotion. I have to declare an interest here: I was a paid adviser for the event, so you have to read the following comments in the light of that. Last week (I'm writing in mid-October) Microsoft launched the European version of the Windows XP Media Center Edition. With the new XP Media Center Edition, Microsoft aim to make Windows PCs a modern equivalent of the radiogram - the heart of a complete music and video home entertainment system. The Windows XP Media Center Edition can transform itself into a TV interface with large friendly graphics.

Windows xp media center software