Among the improvements included in Windows 7’s Media Center are a new album art waterfall display for Now Playing music and a brand new Photo slide show screensaver. Both are enabled by default but what if you’d like to turn them off or have done so by accident? Maybe you’d like to change the settings a bit. Let’s take a look a configuring these new features.

The new album art waterfall displayed behind the currently playing music selection is a subtly animated display of random album art from your music collection slowly falling toward the bottom of the screen. Of course, if this subtle animation gives you a bit of vertigo or that Spice Girls cover that could result in years of ridicule from the boys needs hidden we better locate those settings.

From the Media Center start menu locate Settings –> Music –> Now Playing. At the bottom of this screen you’ll see options to adjust the Now Playing Background. At this point there’s no options to choose which covers are displayed and which are not but you can enable the animation, use a still background or disable the background all together.

Windows 7 Media Center also packs a brand new Photo screen saver. Enable or disable it from Settings –> Pictures –> Slide Show Screensaver.

Now after the set period of time your favorite pictures will be displayed as a fresh screensaver. To adjust what pictures are shown in the screensaver you’ll need to adjust your favorite pictures settings in Settings –> Pictures –> Favorite Pictures. Here you can adjust the slideshow to use a specific set of pictures including those with a certain rating, by folder or slideshow or simply all pictures.

That’s all there is to adjusting these new features in Windows 7 Media Center. Hopefully you enjoy these new additions even more now that we’ve discovered just how to tweak them to your preferences.