Media Center : All solutions for your television

Media Center is available in the Vista Ultimate, Vista Home Premium and Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, where the Media Center aspect was the central core. We will also see this in the top of the range version of Windows 7 (notably Ultimate). This multiMedia Center also has the advantage of being simple to use and completely intuitive, as well as being completely free. The presentation of your content in the thumbnails form is extremely easy to see. This is great point for the program when you are sitting a good distance away from the TV! Windows Media Center automatically looks for all media across your hard drives, memory cards and memory sticks. You can also specify your personal folders, which could be your shared network folders on other computers or on a file server.

WMC manages your audio and video files, your photos, DVD video, Internet radio and a whole range of media based on numerous criteria (album, genre, composer, year…). You can also watch and record the television if your PC has an internal or external TV Tuner card (USB or IEEE 1394 / FireWire), a CD or DVD burner, player, on demand films (CanalPlay, Vodeo.TV…) or even synchronise to a portable MP3 player. You should be careful though as a lot of TV cards are not compatible, unlike with Media Portal. It is therefore better that you consult the compatibility list.

Browsing can be done with the mouse, the keyboard or better still, a remote control. If you want to view videos in the DivX, XviD or other file formats, then you will need to install the corresponding codec packs on a case by case basis (www.divx.com, www.xvid.org...) or just a single time by installing a codec pack which integrates all of the codec’s (Klite Mega Codec Pack, Vista Codec Package).

A selection of multiMedia Centers for Windows:
Only a few have been able to build a solid reputation under Windows! This is the case for Domotix,  Media Portal, Meedio, Windows Media Center (available in XP Media center, Vista Ultimate, 7 Ultimate and Home Premium editions), XBMC, SesamTV.

A selection of Media Centers for MAC and Linux:
For Linux, the more in vogue programs are  Elisa, Freevo, MythTV, My Media System and the GeeXboX distribution. Under Mac OS X, there is Freevo, FrontRow delivered with the OS, as well as XMBC, Myth TV…