Previously, getting MKV to work properly inside Windows 7 Media Center has required quite a bit of effort on the part of the end user. It was necessary to install a number of third party codecs, make modifications to the registry and tweak codec settings to get everything to play nicely. By default Windows 7 Media Center uses a [...]
You may have noticed that Windows Media Center and Windows Media Player have slightly different levels of black on your PC monitor (and possibly even your flat screen monitor). If you notice that your black aren’t quite what they should be while using Media Center the reason could be differing nominal ranges.
By default, for the majority, a television’s [...]
With the final release of Windows 7 coming ever closer we are stating to see a number of very nice tools being released gear toward the new platform. For Media Center users some of the most useful programs being developed are in the area of codec support. With Windows Media Foundation and the new pipeline used in Media Center [...]
Many Media Center users are switching over to 64-bit along with their migration to Windows 7 due to the support for greater than 4gb of system ram. The trouble for those users is third codec creators have been slow to provide x64 counterparts to their beloved x86 products. Luckily, that’s starting to turn around with Haali’s x64 splitter, MPC [...]
Media Center Decoder Utility, an infinitely handy program for changing default decoders for Windows Media Center, has finally made the leap to support Windows 7. Formerly known as Vista Media Center Decoder Utility (VMCD) this simple little program allows you to change decoders with a few simple dropdown boxes. Support for Windows 7 includes renaming of Windows Media Foundation [...]
You can also try this new tool for changing your Directshow Filters without manually entering the registry!
We covered completely replacing the native Microsoft DTV/DVD Decoder with third-party codecs a few days ago but what if you still want to use that codec for live TV? Previously the only way to deactivate the built-in Microsoft codec was to rename the [...]
One of the problems people run into when using Windows 7 Media Center is that it’s locked into using Microsoft’s own decoder for live TV. Not only that but if you should try to simply disable this codec (because it’s also locked in for all h.264 content used in videos) live TV playback won’t function. This happens because codecs [...]
Continuing to get your movie collection in order you may find yourself wanting to change order encodes such as AVI or MP4 files into an MKV format. For instance, the easiest way to bypass the new Windows Media Foundation framework inside of Media Center is to use a non-native format such as MKV. Of course, this will also break [...]
Windows 7 introduces some additional functionality to a feature that was added in Windows Vista, Windows Media Foundation. The goal of the Windows Media Foundation is to ease control of media playback for developers. The idea is to remove the need for individual codecs and instead rely on a single Windows package for media playback, much like DirectX does [...]
