One of my favorite features of commercial DVR boxes is that many of them include the ability to display caller ID information directly on your TV display. Nothing beats the ability to see who’s interrupting your favorite movie without having to actually get up and check the caller ID display. Thanks to VistaCallerID.com it’s possible to get this feature integrated into your Media Center based home theater as well. Even better, once you’ve got the hardware you can get software to thwart telemarketers or even just annoying acquaintances as well!

The first thing we need to do is get the proper hardware. I don’t know about you but I haven’t used (or even seen) an analog modem in the last decade. So the first thing we’ll need to do is pickup the proper hardware. I went with the Rosewill RNX-56AG which at $7 from Newegg is by far the cheapest component in my home theater setup.

Once you’ve got the hardware installed it’s advisable to get the latest drivers for your caller ID capable modem. Throughout the rest of this guide directions will be given specifically for the Rosewill RNX-56AG but may work with other brands. The lastest drivers for the RNX-AG56 can be found at Rosewill.com’s driver page. As of the time of this guide no Windows7 specific drivers are available but the proper Vista drivers work just fine.

After you’ve got the latest drivers installed you will need to download a program called Caller ID Repair Utility, also from VistaCallerID.com. This will add the proper values to the driver’s .inf file to allow for Caller ID to work with the VistaCallerID program. Download the program then right-click to “Run as Administrator”. Inside the program window choose “AT+VCID=1” in the drop box, the other options should remain the same. Press the “Repair” button and restart your machine.

Next, you will need to download and install the Vista Caller-ID program and the Media Center plug-in from VistaCallerID.com. After installing these, launch the main program to bring up the settings window. Select the modem from the listing in the box at the top, it should be marked with a green checkmark. Right-click the entry and select “Configure Options”. In this window you will need to enter your area code and press OK.

Back in the main options window, there are a number of interesting features available. Vista Caller-ID includes support for importing contacts from Microsoft Outlook which will allow the program to display pictures of your known contacts when they call as well as edit the details for each contact through Outlook. You can even enable a feature to have your PC announce the caller by name when they call.

For now we’re only going to look at enabling call notification and turning on the Media Center plug-in. Check both of these options for Caller ID to appear correctly inside of Media Center. You will also need to be sure that you’ve installed the Media Center plug-in which isn’t included in the main package but downloaded separately.

Vista Caller-ID is able to send caller information over the network to a Media Center PC as well meaning that with the correct information (IP/Network Name) it should even be possible to use the plug-in on an extender. Just select the “Configure” link next to the Media Center plug-in checkbox and input the network name or IP address of the box to receive caller ID information.

This is also quite handy for those people who have filled up all their available PCI slots in their HTPC as you can install the modem into a separate box.

That’s all there is to setting up Caller ID in Windows 7 Media Center. You should now see caller ID displayed inside a small window when someone calls. For even more information, support and downloads visit VistaCallerID.com.

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