Long time users will immediately notice a speed improvement over previous versions, especially while browsing large collections and when first starting the plugin. The entire experience is much more responsive making finding and playing the particular movie you’re looking for much less time consuming than previous versions. As an added bonus Firestorm includes experimental support for an SQLite database which will further improve the experience. To enable this feature you’ll simply need to download and copy the correct version of the SQLite DLL to the ProgramData\MediaBrowser folder.

Another notable feature of MediaBrowser FireStorm is that themes can now be created and released as plugins separate from the core code. Now just like with the plugin interface you can download and switch between themes without the need for a completely new release of the MediaBrowser plugin. In fact the Vanilla theme which was previously included in the main package is now a plugin shipped separately. In order to download the Vanilla theme you’ll need to open the MediaBrowser Configuration and select Add from the Plugins tab. Next select the File –> Sources menu and Add the following source: http://www.throgsoft.com/plugins/plugin_info.xml. Afterward, a restart of the configuration utility is required to load the new plugin listings.

For long time users there have also been some changes to the ImagesByName structure. Images have now been separated into appropriate categories with a new folder structure. In order to facilitate this transition there is a migration tool available for download. Of course, for those new to Media Browser (or who just need to update their images) there is always the extensive package offered by TheHTPC.net.

Another feature long desired has been added as well in multiple entry points. Now, for each section created in the configuration tool MediaBrowser also creates an entry point. Using Media Center Studio you can add these new entry points to any start menu strip. Simply enter the start menu tab and expand the Entry Points at the bottom then drag and drop a point onto the strip. This is a great feature for those who prefer to browse recorded TV shows inside Media Browser or those who simply want to select HD/SD folders from the start menu.

Firestorm is a definite step forward for MediaBrowser which should be a definite upgrade on every Media Center enthusiasts list. The performance and stability alone are quite an improvement over previous releases a certainly cements MediaBrowsers status at the top of the heap of movie library plugins. New users and old alike can download this latest release from the Google Code repository.

To use this new feature make sure you’ve got the latest version of Media Browser, from the forums at mediabrowser.tv, installed. Also, be sure that your content has been properly tagged with the ratings metadata. To do that you can use the popular metadata tool MetaBrowser (or any other tool of your choice that supports the ratings tag). Make sure that each movie or piece of media in the collection contains a proper rating to ensure that your parental control selection will be effective.

Inside MetaBrowser you can set the rating of each listed item by selecting the title in the left hand pane then adjusting the MPAA Rating dropdown to the appropriate rating for each movie. Be sure to press the Save Metadata after each movie has been edited to be certain your selection is saved to the metadata of that movie. Remember, the parental controls will only be as effective as the ratings employed in the collection.

Once you’ve assigned ratings to your media collection it’s time to open up Media Browser’s configuration and setup the parental controls feature. Inside the configuration program be sure to select the Advanced options selection from the top to enable the extra options then open the new parental controls tab. Here you can set the maximum rating allowed to be viewed by everyone in the household as well as the pin number to unlock content.

You also have the option to hide blocked content until the pin is entered. This will remove all titles from the listing that are above the maximum rating until pressing the “lock” button on the main Media Browser window, next to the configuration wrench, and entering the pin number. Unchecking this option leaves the titles in the listing and will prompt for the pin when attempting to play the content. Also included is the option to unlock all content for a period of time once the pin number is entered. This will keep you from having to repeatedly enter the pin while using Media Browser for extended periods but also makes the system vulnerable should you leave the machine unattended in that time.

That’s all there is to it! Just re-launch your Windows 7 Media Center and start up Media Browser to see the new parental controls in effect. There are sure to be many happy parents happy to see this feature added to the Media Browser plugin and the ease of setup makes the system even more effective though the lynch pin here is still in the rating system itself. You need to be certain that your entire collection is properly tagged before the system becomes effective.

The idea comes from Washy on the Media Browser forums and is much like our previous guides on speeding up the Live TV buffer using a RamDisk or using a flash drive. For this guide we’re going the flash drive route because the amount of data we’re working with is somewhat prohibitive in regard to using a RAMDisk. It would require quite a bit of spare RAM to operate the disk for Media Browser’s data but using a fairly inexpensive flash disk like the Patriot Xporter XT Boost 4GB Flash Drive can really speed up access times when browsing through your library without spending much money.

Once you’ve got your flash drive ready setting up Media Browser to use it instead of the default location is fairly simple. First open up Windows Explorer and navigate to the location of the cache and settings, typically found at C:\ProgramData\Media Browser. Note that the Program Data folder is typically hidden and you will need to either have hidden folders enabled or type C:\ProgramData into the navigation bar at the top.

Once you’ve located the MediaBrowser Folder inside ProgramData folder you can cut the folder (or copy then delete) to your flash disk. This will create your MediaBrowser cache as it was on your hard drive except on it’s own flash drive increasing read and write speed drastically. Now you should have a MediaBrowser folder on your flash disk and the folder inside ProgramData should be gone.

Next we’ll need to create a symbolic link from the original location to the new location. This will tell MediaBrowser to use our new cache location instead of the old one. The process is fairly simple for this step as well.

Open a command prompt (start –> “cmd” –> enter) and change to your ProgramData directory by entering “cd C:\ProgramData”. Next create a directory junction by entering “mklink /j MediaBrowser X:\MediaBrowser”. Making sure to change X:\ to the location of your flash disk.

That’s all there is to it! Simple, easy and effective. Now all that reading and writing typically taking place on your hard disk is instead being done from the much faster and more efficient flash disk. You should notice the speed improvement immediately inside Media Browser when browsing your collection. Large collections especially should see a drastic improvement in performance.

Have a Twitter account? Get notified of the latest posts here at Hack7MC directly to your Twitter feed by following our special Hack7MC Twitter stream.

Getting started with MetaBrowser is as simple as downloading the installation program from the website and installing. Afterwards run the program from the program menu, you’ll be presented with a minimal interface with the website on the right and a blank pane on the left. Press the Options button at the bottom of the left pane to add some movie folders.

Select the input box at the very top of the General tab to begin adding folders. Once you’ve selected a folder and pressed the OK button in the folder dialog box you’ll need to press enter in the main input box as well before the folder will be added. Also, be sure that the movie extensions and folders you’ll be using in your collection are added to the Search Options. Finally, if you’re using Media Browser be sure to include your ImagesByName folder so you can download actor images for each of your movies.

Saving the options and returning to the main window press the Refresh List button next to the options button to generate a listing of your available movies. To start fetching metadata select a movie from the list.

Once you’ve selected a movie you’ll see the current metadata for that movie appear on the right hand side of the screen. If you’d like to Fetch Metadata for just this movie start by selecting the Fetch Movie Metadata button on the far right. Alternatively, if you’d prefer to fetch metadata for your entire collection at once select the Process All Movies link directly above it.

Afterward you’ll be given a selection of movies to choose from that match your search. If the correct movie doesn’t appear you can revise your search with the search box at the top. Otherwise, select the movie from the listing and press the Select Movie button. Processing all movies will automatically select the top result for each movie and skip the selection process.

After the metadata has been downloaded you can change the details, poster art and backdrop images through the interface on the right. To select alternative artwork press the Fetch link below each image and you’ll be presented with a selection of artwork available for download from themoviedb.org database.

If you’re a Media Browser user and you selected your ImagesByName folder earlier in the options process you can download actor images as well. Simply press the Download Actor Images button located directly below the Save Metadata button.

Don’t forget to Save Metadata before leaving the movie’s display or your changes will be lost. That should be all there is to the basics of downloading movie metadata with MetaBrowser. There are, of course, a number of other options and possibilities available in the program so be sure to keep checking back to Hack7MC in the future for even more on using MetaBrowser and other metadata tools.

To get started first you’ll need to head over to the MetaBrowser website and download then install the latest version. Once installed run the program for the first time and you’ll see that the interface is very minimalistic at first glance. This can be slightly intimidating for first time users who aren’t quite sure where to start.

Start off by selecting the Options button in the lower left hand corner of the program. This will bring up a small dialog window with a few tabs. Under the general tab let’s add the folders where our TV series are stored.

Press the browse button (…) in the upper right hand corner to bring up a folder selection dialog. Next choose your folder from the box and click OK. Now once the folder has been entered into the input box, you need to select the input box and press enter. Though it’s unclear why this extra step is needed, you’ll see the folder listed below along with a small red button to remove the folder.

Below this area you’ll find the general options for MetaBrowser. Included are the ability to define what types of files are used in your collection, the location of your ImagesByName folder if using Media Browser and the ability to monitor folders for new content.

Once you’ve entered all the general options move on to the TV tab. Meta Browser follows fairly strict naming conventions with little room for error when it comes to TV series. Likely this is the reason why other programs haven’t ventured into this territory.

Here you can define valid names for season folders, for example Season 01, Season 02. All your TV series folder must be arranged as Series Name\Season 00\Videos.ext. If you have videos directly in the series folder or improperly named or arranged folders Meta Brower will not detect them as TV series but Movies instead.

Once you’ve finished, save your settings and return to the main window. It may take a few moments but the list should begin to be populated with your TV series.  Each series should appear under the TV heading with a tree structure containing the season and episodes underneath.

Selecting the series name should bring up a large array of data and options on the right hand side. Here you will be able to assign series artwork, series information and even download actor images. If it hasn’t already been filled in press the Fetch Metadata button to retrieve metadata on this series or the [ Process All TV ] link to do all your TV series at once.

From here you can also download actor images if you have properly set your ImagesByName folder in the general option tab. Simply press the Download Actor Images button on the far right hand side.

Once you’ve finished editing your series details be sure to press the Save Metadata button, otherwise all your edits will be lost when you leave this view!

After saving your series metadata you can go on to edit individual episode information and images by selecting the episode name in the left hand pane. Once again be sure to Save Metadata after making any changes and before moving on to the next section.

That’s all there is to fine tuning your TV series metadata for use in Media Browser with MetaBrowser. Unfortunately for users of the native Windows 7 Media Center formats such as DVR-MS and WTV this tool won’t provide much help in those areas as the formats aren’t supported.

Stay tuned to Hack7MC in the future to get even more guides on using MetaBrowser and other great Windows 7 Media Center tools and plugins! Subscribe to our RSS Feed or Email Updates!

Though there are still a number of outstanding bugs here’s a short list of the issues addressed in version 2.1.1 according to the announcement:

• Fixed missing actor images
• Some fixes to improve poster view / cover flow performance. Note: It is still not super fast on Vanilla and Diamond, but its better.
• (The only new feature) Jas added an awesome new feature which give you pagination for newest items in the enhanced home screen
• Fixed crash in EHS which could be triggered when a movie existed in your root folder
• Configurator load time was improved
• Made code backwards compatible with .Net 3.5 (RC)
• Fixed display of view config menu
• Display play all/random properly in coverflow diamond
• Diamond movie page: Fixed display option wandering, tweaked poster, added local trailer support

This update is now available through the Google Code download site and will be marked as a automatic beta update in a few days time.

Also available for download today, an update to the Media Browser Start Strip Extras. This package of extras lets users place extra programs on the new Media Browser start strip. Included in this updated package is the registry fix to remove the default Movie start strip so there’s no need for the original start strip modification any longer.

Currently available in easy to consume registry files, just double-click and apply to the registry, are the following Media Center plugins:

• Media Control
• Music Browser
• Media Center Mail
• PlayIt
• PowerDVD9
• SecondRun.tv
• TotalMedia Theatre 3
• TubeCore
• TunerFreeMCE
• TwitterMCE
• My Trailers for MCE
• Turn Off Default Movie Strip
• Rename Media Browser Strip (Edit .reg file)

To install just download the package and unzip to your hard drive. Run any registry file and follow the on-screen prompts to make the changes to your registry. Then simply relaunch Media Center for the changes to take effect.

If there are any other applications you’d like to see added to the package leave a comment below along with the website where the plugin can be found. Comments with website links in them may be caught for moderation, don’t worry we got it and there’s no need to resubmit.

The first thing most users are going to be presented with is the updated configuration program. This new version includes support for downloadable plugins as well as an entire new Advanced section area.

Adding plugins to your Media Browser install was far easier than could’ve been imagined before seeing it in action. Just go into the Plugin tab and select the plugin from the list of available plugins. The program will then install it for you which is about as easy as it could possibly be.

Moving on from plugins you’ll also find tabs to add your favorite podcasts to the new Media Browser as well as the option to add external players for individual file types. Unfortunately, I was unable to get this particular feature to work so it’s still unknown how well it works or the ease of getting back into your original Media Center interface.

Getting into Media Browser where the real action is you’ll find a completely new interface upon entering. This is a big improvement over previous versions that simply displayed a list of the folders you had added.

This new interface is highly informational as well. Here you’ll see your local weather, if you’ve configured it, your folders listed across the bottom and the latest additions to your collection. Each skin includes a different style from this front area as well with Vanilla displaying only a single title but including a short description along with it.

The new weather display is something that would be a wonderful inclusion to the default Media Center interface and is something that other home theater applications have had access to for some time already.

Digging even deeper into this enormous release you’ll find theatrical trailers (if you’ve installed the plugins) available from both iTunes (in HD!) and FilmTrailer.com. Using a fairly straightforward, folder type display, you’ll find more trailers than you’re likely to ever heard of right at your fingertips.

On one machine used it took several reloads of Media Browser to get trailer covers to load into the interface, however, though a second machine got the immediately. Also, the addition of trailers to our existing movie collections would be a big plus that didn’t make it into this release.

Also a big new feature in this release of Media Browser is the inclusion of a complete new theme. The new Diamond theme as an easier to read view to some of the more text intensive areas such as the Movie Details view. Using this new theme the initial view displays five of the most recently added movies in each folder group as well.

For the few bugs they are far outweighed by the advantages of the new features that have made it in. The addition of an entirely new plugin system means that third-party development will likely propel Media Browser even farther in no time at all. This is certainly an ambitious release and a must try for any Media Center user!

Among the improvements are a completely redesigned initial interface, stability and performance improvements and an all new plug-in system. Also among the new features is a very enhanced configuration application. Introduced in the last version of Media Browser, the configuration application now has an advanced tab which allows for much more customization than the previous version.

So head on over and download the latest version of Media Browser and keep checking back to Hack7MC for the full review and future guides on using the new Media Browser.

Also of note this week, though no where near as notable as a new Media Browser, are various improvements to the Hack7MC site.

First you’ll most likely notice that the Friend Connect bar at the top of the site is now gone. You can still post comments using your Friend Connect or Google Account but the actual Friend Connect bar was slow to load and didn’t any anything substantial to the content.

The decision to remove it came as a result of a more general effort to improve the performance of the entire site which has been a great success. Regular readers should see a huge improvement in the response time of the site.

Also under construction here on Hack7MC are the usability elements. Any small images and small text are going to be slowly phased out and replaced with larger easier to use elements.

If there are any areas of the site you’d like to see improvements or changes feel free to drop your suggestions through the contact form.

To get started download the StarkCovers zip package (version 6.23.2009) and extract it anywhere on your hard drive. Inside you’ll find a collection of available cover types by folder, the mediainfo.dll, a starkcovers.bat file and a starkcovers.exe file. We’ll begin by editing the .bat file.

Once you’ve had a chance to browse through the various covers available in the package, open the starkcovers.bat file in notepad or a similar text editor. Inside you’ll find a few basic instructions and some examples. Each line proceeded by REM will be ignored by the program so don’t worry about them.

Instead insert a new line before pause with the following: StarkCovers.exe “MovieFolder” coverstyle. Change MovieFolder to the location of your movie folder and coverstyle to the name of the style covers you’d like to use. If you’d like to add a specific cover to all the movies in this folder add :file.png immediately after coverstyle, for example sidelogo:dvd.png.

On my own collection I applied the case:BD.png to my Blu-Ray folder and sidecover:DVD.png to my standard DVD folder as you can see in the screenshots above.

Now save the .bat file and then run the file. You’ll see a command window and can watch the process as each image is converted. There was a problem during these tests with the system running out of memory during the process. In spite of having the maximum amount of ram available for a 32-bit system the program ate up all available memory several times during the process and returned an error. (fixed in version 6.23.2009)

Luckily, running the .bat a second time processed the remaining folder.jpg files. If you’d like to revert your folder images back to the original folder.jpg edit the .bat and use StarkCovers.exe “MovieFolder” –revertjpg . This will revert your folder images back to their original state.

That’s all there is to it! Just re-launch Media Browser and you should see your new covers. Thanks to tyborg for this wonderful little tool, it’s sure to be improving a large number of enthusiasts’ movie collections.

Looking for more Media Browser hacks? Subscribe to Hack7MC using one of our free subscription methods to get the latest every day!

By default, for the majority, a television’s color ranges are set to 16-235. This means the lowest level of black is 16 and the highest white is 235. On a monitor calibrated for PC use the levels are 0-255, with 0 being black and 255 being the highest white.

Now you may think that having those extra levels could only mean good things right? Well, it’s not quite that cut and dry. If your flat screen is calibrated to 16-235 then black will truly be 16, changing this setting to 0 can result in an image that is too dark. Those extra 16 levels of grey/black won’t be seen and levels above 16 will be improperly darker than they should be.

These facts are important to note before simply rushing in head long and changing settings. Take time to note your monitors specifications as well as your preferences in each setting before settling on one mode or the other.

On the standard PC monitor the difference in black levels will appear similar to the rollover below. The first image represents the black levels in Media Center with the second from Media Player. Notice the difference in the background, the black/grey seperation at the top and the difference in contrast in the character’s face.

Now there are a few ways to change this behavior. For example, nVidia drivers include the ability to change the default behavior for all video playback through the control panel. Under the Video and Television heading select Adjust Video and Television Settings. Inside, under the Advanced tab, you’ll find the option to select the desired color range.

The advantage of setting this at the driver level is that your output will be controlled across all programs. If that’s not what you’re looking for, however, there is another option.

Download these registry files from Hack7MC that will allow you to enable and disable a debug setting that will change the default behavior of just Media Center.

The below rollover demonstrates the difference in black levels between WMP and Media Center after the registry fix has been applied. You can see that they are much closer to the same black levels.

Of course, this will need to be applied in a per situation basis. Not every user should employ this modification and the application will depend on the hardware being used. Specifically consider the specifications of your flat screen TV. There is of course also personal preference to consider and the modification can always be reversed.

The registry settings used were taken from The Green Button forums user Ian Kennedy. Comparison screenshots taken from George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead.