Not satisfied with the default setting of seven rows of channels displayed in the episode guide of Windows 7 Media Center? Unfortunately, there is no option to enable an increased number of rows to appear so increasing the rows displayed requires users to do extensive editing to the Media Center DLL files. Thankfully, Bill24 has posted a guide to the editing required on the Australian Media Center Community. This guide is fairly advanced for those not familiar with editing DLL files however so we’ve created a small patch to allow users to easily make the edits to the Media Center shell file. You’ll still need to follow the beginning portion of the guide though and we’ve also included the actual edits made in the original article for those interested in the data behind the changes.

To get started decide whether you’ll be using the patch or editing your Media Center shell DLL by hand. If the patch doesn’t work you’ll likely need to edit the file by hand as updated or altered versions of the Media Center shell DLL could cause the patch to no longer work properly. If using the patch download it here, otherwise you’ll need a program to edit the file by hand such as Resource Hacker or Restorator. Also, a copy of Media Center Studio is required.

The first step is launching Media Center Studio and creating a new theme. Bill24 doesn’t mention in the guide what changes this makes to the Media Center files that makes it a required step, it may be a simple matter of setting the correct permissions on the required Media Center DLL files. Once inside Media Center Studio select the New button to create a new theme, name your new theme and save the file. Return to the main themes listing tab and select the newly created them then press the Apply button. Launch Media Center and browse to the EPG guide, unless additional edits were made inside Media Center Studio nothing should have changed.

Alternatively, if you’ve got the Take Ownership registry file applied you can take ownership of the Microsoft.MediaCenter.Shell.dll file to affect the same results.

Now open Windows Explorer and browse to C:\Windows\ehome and locate the MediaCenter.Shell.dll file. Copy the file to another location and make certain to create a backup of this file as well just incase something should go wrong during the process. Now, if using the patch method, copy the patch into the same directory as Microsoft.MediaCenter.Shell.dll and apply the patch to this file. Afterward copy the file back into the C:\Windows\ehome directory. Relaunch Windows 7 Media Center and check your EPG guide, there should now be ten rows listed.

For those editing the file by hand open the MediaCenter.Shell.dll in your resource editor and browse to the html –> EPG.MCML file. Inside search for the following lines and edit the values as described:

Name=”InitialGridPosition” Left=”FilterButton,1,1″ Right=”Parent,1,-53″ Top=”FilterButton,0, –44
Name=”InitialGridPosition” Left=”FilterButton,1,1″ Right=”Parent,1,-53″ Top=”FilterButton,0, -134

Set Target=”[FilterButtonLayout.Bottom.Offset]” Value=“493”
Set Target=”[FilterButtonLayout.Bottom.Offset]” Value=“580”

Set Target=”[Table.VisibleRowCapacity]” Value=“7”
Set Target=”[Table.VisibleRowCapacity]” Value=“10”

Font FontName=”global://comm:LightFontFace” FontSize=“48”
Font FontName=”global://comm:LightFontFace” FontSize=“0”

<Set Target=”[Table.VisibleRowCapacity]” Value=“2″/>
<Set Target=”[Table.VisibleRowCapacity]” Value=“4″/>

After changing each of these values save the MediaCenter.Shell.dll file and place it back in it’s original location. Relaunch Windows 7 Media Center and browse to the EPG guide to ensure that you’ve now got ten rows listed.

Thanks to Bill24 for sharing this information with the Windows 7 Media Center community! Be sure to check out his blog on the Australian Media Center Community website for even more great information on modifying Media Center. This certainly is a more efficient usage of screen real-estate than the original seven row display.