One of the most popular movie library plug-ins for Media Center recently added a new theme to it’s default install called Vanilla. Hidden inside this new theme is the ability to add movie trailers to the information screen for each movie. It’s not very simple and you’ll need to download the trailers manually but this is definitely a nice feature to have. Be sure to have one of the recent betas (2.0.10.0+) and turn on the Vanilla theme.

First you will need to download movie trailers to use with Media Browser. The easiest way to get them is to use a program such as HD Movie Trailer Downloader or Get Trailers. Download the trailers for each movie and place it inside that movie’s folder (or anywhere else you’d like to store them).

Once you’ve got your trailers downloaded it’s necessary to tell Media Browser where to find them. The Vanilla theme uses the old MyMovies.xml to find the location of trailers for each movie. You don’t need MyMovies installed or even the complete MyMovies.xml file to use this feature though. Just create a mymovies.xml file in each movies directory and place the following inside:

<Title>
<LocalTrailer>
<URL>C:\Users\Public\Videos\HD Movies\Bangkok Dangerous\trailer.mov</URL>
<Type>1</Type>
</LocalTrailer>
</Title>

Now change the URL value to the location of the movie trailer for this movie and save the file. Be sure to save the file as “mymovies.xml” not “mymovies.xml.txt”. This will instruct the Vanilla theme that there is a trailer available for this movie and where it can be found.

Then just load up Media Browser and browse to that movie. You should now see an icon on the left hand side for the trailer. Press this button and Media Browser will begin to play the trailer for this movie in a small window above the movie information.

This could be an indispensable feature for those who find themselves forgetting exactly what a movie is about and aren’t into reading those drawn out synopsis descriptions. Plus there aren’t many better ways to convince others (like your wife!) that your movie selection is, in fact, worth watching.

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