As you can see in the screenshots below there should be nice red tinted text as in the author’s screenshots but instead the text is default blues.

Download Cherry Red Theme

A fantastic theme though for those who can get the font colors working properly and sure to be a classic if the font issue is resolved. So download it, give it a try and if your fonts change color let us know what voodoo you were practicing at the time in the comments below. As always, here’s some install instructions:

Installing this theme requires Windows 7 Media Center and Media Center Studio, a free media center theme creation application. Once you’ve downloaded the zip file extract the .mct file inside to a location of your choice. Open Media Center Studio and select the themes tab then select Import Theme. Locate the file and import the theme into the program. Select the newly imported theme from the listing and hit Apply. The theme will be applied the next time media center is started.

Also newly released is an app for you iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch that enables remote streaming of your media directly to the device. This is another feature currently being instituted by cable providers that is a fantastic addition to Media Center. The app isn’t free, costing around seven dollars and including most of the features of the web-based service including TV guide access, recording scheduling and remote media streaming. Check out the video below from developer FatAttitude showcasing this new feature.

The base program, using a web based interface, still does much of what it had done previously as would be expected though with some slight upgrades to the streaming. Though there were still problems streaming video in anything above normal quality, even over a local gigabit network. Recorded TV, video and movies now support full seeking so you can skip past commercials or any other bit without much trouble however, which is a welcome feature indeed.

Remote Potato still takes on remote TV scheduling with relative ease, though the Silverlight version of the guide can be sluggish at times it’s more than a competent replacement for the cable companies often less than stellar offerings. For those looking to replace their costly commercial DVR with Media Center without loosing out on any of the features it’s hard to image not giving the free Remote Potato server a try. Browsing through your other media collections just serves to sweeten the pot, especially when combined with the portability of the iPad/iPhone app.

TunerSalad is a simple program that will allow users to increase the number of tuners of each type able to be used with just the press of a button. To get started visit the TunerSalad page to download the application. Once downloaded just extract the program from the zip file and run the application.

The first step to updating the tuner limitation is to select your region from the dropdown box. This ensures that the program makes the correct modifications (just as with My Channel Logos). Afterward just press the Increase tuner limit button and wait for notification that the process is complete. Simple as that. To return to the default configuration press the Reset button.

As with past software from the author it’s completely free to use but donation are appreciated. The program will compel you to do so each time it’s closed as well though it shouldn’t pose too much of an inconvenience being something that won’t be run regularly in most cases.

Simply put TunerSalad is incredibly useful for anyone who’d like to employ even more tuning power in their Media Center machine. After all if we wanted to stick to mediocre capabilities we’d have gone with the cable company’s DVR. TunerSalad is another amazing program, well worth a donation to keep them coming from the same author that gave us the incredible My Channel Logos program which is also well worth using for Media Center enthusiasts.

Be sure to give both programs a try and stay tuned to Hack7MC for even more useful Media Center information, tips and tricks.

To get started with this example you’ll need to have mcShoutcast downloaded and installed, though the same process can be applied to any entry point. This example will launch mcShoutcast and start playing the first favorite station. To get started setting up the scheduled alarm open up Task Scheduler from the start menu (start –> “task scheduler” –> enter) and select the option to Create Basic Task.

Give the task a name and description of your own choosing and move on to the next step in creating the task, setting the trigger. For a standard Monday through Friday alarm setup choose the Weekly option. From here the task can be set to run on specific days each week at a specific time each morning.

Continuing on tell the Task Scheduler to Start a program at these times and enter the following to have mcShoutcast open and play the first favorite station: C:\Windows\ehome\ehshell.exe /entrypoint:{6691E7EC-EF42-4493-A2E9-2DA345F9B7D5}\{BB2F49CD-159C-4e06-91A8-80CE232DB19C}

Task Scheduler will inform you that the second portion of the string actually belongs in the arguments box (everything following the .exe) but will give you the option to do this automatically if not done by hand. Click OK on the dialog to move the entrypoint argument to the arguments box.

Some users may also need to set the options to run the program with Highest Privileges and to Wake the computer if sleeping. These options can be accessed by selecting the new task in the Task Scheduler Library and selecting Properties from the right. Select the Conditions tab from the Properties dialog and check the checkbox to enable waking the computer from sleep (which may also require highest privileges found on the General tab).

That should be all there is to it. Close any open dialogs and return to Windows. This method of launching mcShoutcast will open Windows Media Center if not already running, launch the plugin and then begin playing the first favorite station. To launch other plugins you’ll need to get the entrypoint as described in this previous article or use another Media Center switch to launch other media types.

Thanks to Marc for the tip and to all our Hack7MC readers. If you’ve got a tip for us let us know with our contact form! For those not yet signed up for one of our free subscriptions be sure to do that now as well!

To find ATI’s Overscan/Underscan and GPU scaling options follow these steps:

Open ATI Control Center and bring down the Graphics menu and select the Desktops and Displays option.

Next select the display which isn’t showing the proper scaling near the bottom of the screen in the small toolbar of displays. Right-click the display and select the Configure… option.

From this screen you can enable or disable the built-in GPU scaling functions of the card as well as choose from a few modes which might better suit your display.

To adjust Overscan/Underscan, select the Scaling Options tab and select the checkbox to enable the feature. Then adjust the setting using the slider.

That’s all there is to it! Something that probably should’ve been quite a bit easier to find to begin with. If you’ve got any more tips or information on these or other ATI driver settings be sure to drop them in the comments below!

Splitting Those MKVs

First on the list is a tiny little program which expands the number of video formats able to be played in Windows Media Center. Haali’s splitter now comes in both x86 and x64 and will enable new video formats, such as MKV, by simply splitting the content into audio video streams and sending it to the already available Microsoft decoders. This sort of software is known as a splitter.

Haali’s isn’t the only splitter available. Gabest’s splitter also comes in both x86 and x64 formats and will also take care of playing MKV files inside Windows 7 Media Center. Links to Gabest’s splitter can be found in the MKVs for Minimalists guide here on Hack7MC. Though the FFDShow installation is no longer necessary you can expand your playback options by installing it as well. FFDShow will allow for manipulation of settings not available in the built-in Microsoft decoders.

Extended Play

Ever paused Windows Media Center for so long that when you came back the show that had been playing has now been mutilated into a worthless unwatchable mess? This is due to the default pause buffer being too small, in spite of the fact that most Windows 7 Media Center machines carry hefty amounts of storage to hold the data.

This quick fix will let you set the default pause buffer as high as 120 minutes (2 hours). It’s both easy and efficient, just set it up once and forget about it from now. That is until you pause a show on the Media Center for over an hour and come back to a perfectly watchable show afterward.

Faster Forward

Ever notice skipping past those commercials in recorded television can be somewhat of a chore at the default settings? We’ve got a simple set of registry fixes that will allow for easily setting the skip intervals to new values. Changing the forward setting to a minute or even just matching the forward and reverse skip intervals, which by default are 30 seconds forward and 7 seconds reverse, can make a world of difference.

Expanded View

Media Center’s TV Guide defaults to a slim seven row display leaving ample room to display the Media Center background along with pertinent information. It’s an esthetic choice that limits the number of rows in the EPG and can even be a waste of time. Clear up this issue and bump the number of displayed channel rows up to ten. Take that big screen TV and use it’s real estate for all it’s worth.

Made for TV

Another slightly disturbing default behavior is Media Center’s habit of placing recorded from TV movies, full of commercials and cut to ribbons, in the Movie Library. Certainly this would be great if recording from HBO or Showtime but it doesn’t quite work out when recording from TBS. Take a minute to apply this quick registry fix to never have recorded from TV movies added to the main Movie Library again.

7MC Doesn’t Take Flac

Out of the box Microsoft seems to have a huge problem with supporting free and open-source formats, MKV and Flac among the many. Flac being a popular format for audiophiles and music lovers this can be a serious problem. The fix for this problem will require a couple of downloads but will get Flac working inside Windows Media Center and even Media Player. Though there isn’t any extended track information support inside either program or Windows Explorer for that matter.

Don’t Forget

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The first step is to open up the Registry Editor by bringing up the start menu and entering “regedit” in the search box and pressing enter. This should launch the built-in Windows registry editor. Once inside navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\Radio\presets

Right-click the presets entry and select the Export option. Save the file someplace safe. Now each time you’d like to restore your Radio presets you’ll simply need to double-click this new .reg file to restore the registry entries. Confirm the addition of the data to the registry in the pop-up dialog and you should be all set.

For those of you who aren’t taking advantage of the Radio section of Windows Media Center due to a lack of good AM/FM radio antenna this can make a good DIY project. There are several guide to making your very own radio antenna available online, an antenna is just a length of properly sized conductive metal after all. You can find a few good guides to creating a radio antenna here in pdf form, from eHow, or in this more complete guide to everything you’d possibly want to know about antenna.

Otherwise, just sit back and enjoy Windows Media Center knowing that your personal Radio presets are backed up for posterity. Thanks to Joe Hecht for sending us this handy little tip and thanks to all for reading Hack7MC. Have a tip you’d like to share? Send it to us here on our Contact Page!

In Windows 7 simply click the clock and date in the lower right hand of your task bar to bring up the calendar. You’ll quickly notice you can’t change the time directly on this screen (or even set handy reminders like doctors appointments to pop-up a notification later on, come on Microsoft please?) What you’ll need to do is click the Change date and time settings link at the bottom to bring up the time settings dialog.

Here of course you can set your time correctly and fix the problem, for a while. By default Windows will contact a remote server and request the time at which point you’ll likely be back to square one. The easiest fix for the problem is to select the Internet Time settings tab and then press the Change Settings button to set the internet time options. In most cases you can most likely just disable the feature and be all set. However, if you’d prefer to simply try a different time server there are several choices listed in the dropbox.

If you’re looking for a new time server you can also enter one manually by clicking the entry area and typing it in yourself. Rick Broida suggests pool.ntp.org while Ed Bott gives us an entire lineup of government servers to choose from.

Whichever method you choose you’ll be sure to be enjoying a much better recorded TV experience once you’re able to watch your show from beginning to end as it was meant to be. Be sure to keep coming back to Hack7MC for even more tips as well as plugins, hacks and more for Windows 7 Media Center.

First we’ll need a copy of vLite, a free piece of software that will allow us to add and remove certain pieces of Windows as well as drivers and other items to the Windows 7 installation process. Once you’ve downloaded and installed the program you will also be notified that you need to download the WAIK package from Microsoft. The version linked by the vLite program works well enough but there is also a version that officially supports Windows 7 here.

Either mount the WAIK ISO using a program such as Virtual Clone Drive or burn it to disk and install the package. Now we can run vLite and select the original Windows 7 installation media (the files from the DVD not the Windows install folder). vLite will ask you for a location to save the files locally.

Continuing on to the next set of options in vLite you’ll be presented with a number of checkboxes to determine what parts of the install you’d like to configure. Check Integration, Components, Tweaks and Bootable ISO as a minimum. This will allow us to add any drivers for hardware such as TV tuners, display and sound drivers and other items as well as remove nonessential items for a Media Center only setup.

The first step is Integration. On this tab we can select drivers and hotfixes to preload into the installation process. For Media Center users it’s handy to include items such as TV tuner drivers, display drivers and audio card drivers. Sure you can wait until after the installation is finished but we can save some time by including it from the beginning. Though there aren’t many hotfixes available at this point since the operating system is so new you should have no problem running a quick Windows update after installation, however, once items such as service packs become available you can also include them in the process on this tab.

Now onto the components to remove from the default installation process. This tab can be somewhat tricky for beginners to handle as there is a large number of options. Luckily there are comments to the right of each option giving a quick description of the what it handles and whether or not it’s typically safe to remove. For Media Center exclusive machines there are actually a large number of options which can be checked for removal. Things such as games, paint, wordpad, printer and scanner support are no brainers for the most part (unless you play the Media Center games then leave those in of course).

Typically, novices should steer clear of the services and system options if they aren’t 100% sure of what they are doing. This is also where you can find the biggest performance gains however. A basic list of system and service components that can typically be removed follows and there may be more or less that suit your specific needs. You will need to examine each one and determine whether or not you need the feature enabled.

• Error Reporting
• Protected Storage
• Remote Registry
• Secondary Login
• BitLocker Drive Encryption
• Disk Quota
• Help
• Natural Language
• Performance Counters
• Reliability and Performance Monitor
• Run a Legacy CPL Elevated
• Security Center
• System Restore
• Tablet PC
• Windows Defender
• Windows Easy Transfer

Remember, turning these items off is only recommended for a Media Center run and forget type of setup. Slimming down Windows 7 for most extensive use will require different components remain installed. Also, requirements will vary from user to user and you should evaluate each component being removed based on your specific needs.

On the next tab you will find a list of tweaks that can be applied during the initial setup as well. Turning off further services by default, without removing them for installation, can result in even further performance gains. Examining items under services listed as Automatic start can setting them to manual or disabled can provide a bit more flexibility than removing them from installation altogether while still not running them by default. Items such as Cryptographic services and firewall are a few you may want to consider setting to manual or disabled to save some additional resources.

Once you’ve finished each of the tasks press the Apply button to begin creating your newly customized version of Windows 7. vLite will begin processing the changes and create a new installation build. Once complete you’ll be given the option of creating an ISO or burning the new installation image to a DVD. We recommend an ISO for it’s portability, storage and copying abilities as it can always be burned to DVD later.

Simply choose the desired option and press the button in the lower right hand corner. If you chose ISO and would like to create a DVD from the image later you can follow this handy guide to using Microsoft’s own USB DVD Download tool. That’s all there is to it! You’ve now got a highly customized version of Windows 7 ready to go.

Though there are many versions of Windows 7 available for purchase on the Microsoft Store as a downloadable product most users will have picked up a physical version of the product (especially with lower prices to be had at retailers such as Newegg for OEM versions and 3-pack OEM versions). So the first step is going to be turning that DVD disk into something more portable. To accomplish this you’ll need at least one machine with a DVD drive in it and a program for creating a ISO version of the disk.

For this guide we suggest using OtivTech’s Virtual Disk. The program is simple to use, just download, install and run, select the drive you’ve placed the disk in and press the Create ISO button. Even better it’s completely free. Creating the ISO file will take a while to complete, somewhere in the neighborhood of 15-30 minutes depending on the speed of your drive.

Why create an ISO file instead of simply copying the data straight off the disk onto our hard drive? It is entirely possible to never create an ISO of the disk and still get a perfectly working USB install disk but the advantages of having a single file copy of the disk that can be stored in a central location shouldn’t be underestimated. Now is the perfect time to create that copy as well as it certainly won’t be at the top of the priority list once the operating system install is complete. Also, we can use this ISO copy with programs like vLite to create a trimmed down installation as well (check back soon for a guide to slimming down Windows 7 installs to the basics for a Media Center setup!).

Once we’ve got our ISO copy created Microsoft has a handy little app designed to turn that file into an installation copy directly to a USB or DVD disk. Microsoft’s USB DVD Download Tool can be downloaded directly from the Microsoft Store and makes installation disk creation exceptionally easy.

Fist choose the ISO file we created then choose which type of media we’ll be copying to, in this case a USB drive. In the next step you’ll have the a dropdown box with a listing of available drives to choose from. In order to create a standard installation disk for Windows 7 you’ll need a USB drive with a minimum of 4gb free space available. Just choose the appropriate disk from the dropdown and select “Begin copying”.

Once complete you can safely remove your USB disk and you’ve now got a complete working bootable Windows 7 USB installation disk.

That’s all there is to it! Check back soon when we’ll also be covering the details of trimming out the excess programs installed by default with Windows 7 that simply aren’t necessary for a Media Center only setup.