Trading Movie Library for Media Browser
by Michael Healy @ 7:15 am on February 4th, 2009 in dvd ripping, media browser, movie library, plugins with 19 Comments
Windows 7 Media Center’s Movie Library is good, certainly much better than it’s predecessors, but still somewhat lacking. Features like fanart and automatic retrieval of metadata have long been standards in other media center applications. While 7MC has come a long way these features are still sorely missed.
This is where a plug-in called Media Browser comes in. Media Browser provides an alternative to the default Movie Library by scanning a your video folders and letting you browse a folder based structure instead of simply piling everything into one section. Just this makes Media Browser a worthwhile download for anyone who has several different types of videos such as Movies and Television Series DVDs.
On the first run there is a prompt that allows you to set some basic options that can also be changed through the user interface later on. Set the startup folder to the base folder for your movie collection and Movie Browser will begin to scan for content. This is where Media Center really begins to kick.
Not only will Media Browser display a list of your movies in several different display formats it will also automatically retrieve information for each of your titles. As long as your folders have the appropriate name for the movie a good amount of metadata including covers, description, fanart, actors, genre and more will be pulled down without having to do any extra work. This setup is much easier than locating dvdid.xml for each of your titles for the default Movie Library. It’s not a perfect system however, small differences in titles can be the difference between getting the correct metadata and getting nothing.
The various display types are easy to cycle through using the menus located at the top of the display. Media Browser can arrange your media on several different criteria from the metadata that has been retrieved. This level of customization ensures each user can find a display that is comfortable and easy to use.
While Media Browser has support for TV series metadata as well the base support isn’t quite as solid at this point as the regular movie sections. A trip to the Media Browser forums and you can find several solutions to finding the appropriate information for your series.
A strong community at present provides even further options for customizing the plug-in. There are several programs provided from forum goers for doing any number of tasks such as retrieving TV Series metadata and even HD movie trailers.
Media Browser is definitely a solid solution for anyone looking to move away from the default Move Library to something a little more robust. Though this plug-in doesn’t currently integrate with the main menu in Windows 7 MC it can still be found under the Extras Library and added to the Extras menu from there.
Head on over to the Media Browser forums to pick up your download of this fine plug-in and give it a run on your Media Center today, you won’t regret it. Be sure to check back to Hack7MC for more coverage of this app in the future as well. Follow on Twitter or subscribe to the RSS feed for even easier access!
