Windows Vista Media Center users, take note

Posted by:
Nick White
04:50 PM Tuesday
Apr 24, 2007
27 Comments

If you run Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate editions (why run anything other than Ultimate?), you may notice that Windows Update contains an update for Media Center on both 32- and 64-bit systems. You can download the update directly from the Microsoft Windows Update Web site or from the Windows Download Center (x86 or x64).

I'm glad to see the arrival of the April 2007 Cumulative Update for Media Center for Windows Vista, as it resolves the following issues, some of which have annoyed me:

The video may appear to freeze when the movie begins in some DVDs
When you rotate a picture during a slide show in Windows Media Center, the wrong photo may be rotated
The cover art for recorded TV movies may not appear in the DVD library view
When you delete a picture in Windows Media Center, you may receive an error message
When you try to play a DVD by using Autoplay, you may receive an error message

The update also provides the following improvements:

Online Media support has been added for Windows Media Center on 64-bit versions of Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate
Video Playlist support has been added for Windows Media Center Extenders
Improvements have been made to Online Media caching

There's also another change that affects those of you using Windows Media Center Extenders. Windows Media Center Extenders, such as the Microsoft Xbox 360, use network ports to communicate over the network to computers that are running Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate. This cumulative update contains updates to Media Center programs that may have been previously configured as "approved" or "allowed" by a third-party firewall. If you use a third-party firewall, you may have to manually update your firewall to let the new versions of these programs access the ports. If you do not perform these firewall updates, you may experience failures when you try to connect the Windows Media Center Extender to the Media Center computer.

Comments

DJHarter

Posted on: May 11, 2007 at 4:05PM
I noticed that when Vista Media Center is run in Full Screen mode, the Print Screen keyboard function just produces a black screen image. Is this by design or is there another way to take a quick screenshot which produces a proper copy of the image? Please advise. Tnx, D.J.
hotman

Posted on: July 01, 2007 at 5:14PM
I'm having some issues with Windows Media Center under Vista Ulitmate right now. When I try to go into the guide, my recorded programs, or Live TV (as well as setup for these things), it gives me errors. For instance, the Recorded TV gives me the error

"Component Registration Failure: Some of the files needed to play radio or video are missing or corrupt. Windows Media Center component registration may have failed."

Then tells me I have no recorded shows (the shows recorded before this issue are still there and play back fine with Windows Media Player, though).

The system worked fine for the first couple months I had it up (installed on 3/30/07), then suddenly stopped working one day. It stopped working in May, well after the update in April and before the update in June.

I have tried deleting the TempRec folder and unregsitering and then reregsitering the dll. Neither trick worked. My research shows that at least 5 other people have expereinced this same exact problem. I feel confident its not something that I did since I loaded no new software. The only new loading was the automatic Vista Ulitmate updates.
diegoferreyra

Posted on: August 21, 2007 at 12:33PM
Is there any TV card than can guarantee me 100% Vista Media Center (on x64) support?

I've been searching everywhere and every card seems to have a problem.

Please, let me know if there's ANYTHING I can do to actually have a working TV tuner in my PC.
Nick White

Posted on: August 21, 2007 at 9:17PM
Hey diegoferreyra: I know of folks who run Windows Vista x64 and use videos cards that run Media Center well; there are a lot of variables around how an OEM designs a particular card, however. You might go over to thegreenbutton.com, one of our Windows Featured Community sites, and pose this question to the Media Center experts there. Thanks for reading and good luck.
jared999

Posted on: November 08, 2007 at 11:13PM
Media Center is ALWAYS crashing on me and usually causes my machine to crash as well (BSOD w/ Memory Dump). I want to uninstall and reinstall Media Center but I don't know how. Also I am having issues where it says the tuner is being used, do I wante to take control, and I know that it is not being used (nothing is being recorded, etc). Even if I click Yes nothing happens and I have to restart Media Center to be able to watch TV.

-Jared
rrileypm

Posted on: March 17, 2008 at 6:56PM
I have used media center since the XP version, and like the functionality. Now, I'm running Vista Home Premium.

After using Media Center without a hitch for a year, all of a sudden one day everything crashed...not even recognizing my multiple tuner devices. After trying several of the suggestions above...and several others...I ended up doing a clean install of Vista. Now everything works great again (for now).

I'm pleased with the quality of one hour TV shows, and up until now, I had not really tried recording movies lasting more than one hour.

Whenever I record a movie, Media Center breaks the movie into either two or three files. I would really prefer just one file per movie.

Is there a setting I should change somewhere? I haven't been able to find one. Otherwise, why would MC split the movies?

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