Windows 7 / Getting Started

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Windows Media Player

By far the most often used part of Windows Media Center is the Windows Media Player.

Starting with Vista, Microsoft included a digital media player that lets you download, edit, rearrange, and watch photos, videos, or movies or listen to recorded music and commercial radio. Some users no longer subscribe to cable or satellite TV and now watch TV via their computers.

With a simple USB TV Tuner, you can record and watch shows on your schedule. Windows Media Center has been updated to manage a single TV guide containing both standard and digital high-definition TV shows.

You start the Media Player by clicking the related icon in the taskbar. The first time you do this, you'll be asked to set up the Windows Media Player, which may take some time. After it is set up, you can click this icon to display a list of frequently accessed sections of Media Center. This can be either specific files, such as photos and videos, or functions, such as TV.

You can toggle back and forth between full-screen and minimized modes by clicking anywhere on the content that is playing. Or you can click the View Full Screen icon on the right side of the media controls.

To view your full Media Library along with the interface for managing it, click the Switch To Library icon on the right side of the media controls.

After you switch to the Library View, you get the full screen for managing your library.

The primary categories in the digital media library are on the left, what's currently playing is minimized on the right, and the controls for what's playing are in the bar at the bottom.

After you pick a category, you'll be able to find your favorite shows quickly with new features such as turbo scroll. Just hold down the rightarrow key and you'll zip through content listings.

Note Windows 7 now supports many types of media files, including .asf, .wma, .wmv, .wm, metafiles (.asx, .wax, .wvx, .wpl),Microsoft Digital Video Recording (.dvr-ms), .wmd, .avi, and MPG-type files (.mpg, .mpeg, .m1v, .mp2, .mp3, .mpa, .mpe, .mpv2, and .m3u). In addition, it supports .aac audio files and H.264, DivX, and Xvid video files, with no third-party download needed.

Play To

You can use the Windows 7 Media Player to send video or audio to other Windows 7 PCs and DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance)-certified digital media rendering devices via the Play To feature. With Play To, you can browse or search from within Windows Media Player or Windows Explorer to find the media you want and then choose where you want it to be played. A remote control window appears for each Play To session, giving you the ability to control the entire experience.

You can also Play To a cell phone, provided it is DLNA-certified and supports Windows 7. After you've set up the Windows Media Player to stream media to the cell phone, you can select media items to play on a cell phone or another PC. A Play To remote control window appears on the cell phone, providing standard controls like play, pause, stop, skip forward and backward, seek forward and backward, volume, and mute. After the Play To remote control window appears on your cell phone, you can reorder or delete items, add to the queue, or toggle repeat. You can even add new media items from Windows Media Player or Windows Explorer by dragging them into this window.

Streaming Media

Streaming media is pictures, audio, video, or other media that is constantly received by a user while it is being delivered by a streaming provider. Microsoft has been providing support for streaming media since the 1980s, although there have been problems with bandwidth and computers powerful enough to handle that much data that fast. Windows XP and Vista provided some support for streaming media; Windows 7 provides much better support.

In Windows 7, media streaming is enabled and works by default. Configuring media streaming is easy. The Stream menu in the Window Media Player user interface enables you to

• Set up your home PC so you can access your media libraries while away from home.
• Allow other Windows 7 PCs and devices to push media to your Player and control it.
• Quickly authorize all home PCs and devices to access your media collection.

After you have the Windows Media Player configured to allow streaming media anywhere in your house (or office), why stop there? If your pictures, music, videos, and recorded TV content are available on your home PC, you take it with you, say, on a family vacation. You don't have to download what you want onto your laptop or other media player. You can tap into the entertainment on your home PC from pretty much wherever you can connect to the Internet. Use Windows Media Player on your laptop to listen to music and view pictures, videos, or recorded TV in the media libraries on your home PC.