16.6. Advanced Settings: Home Premium ¢Ultimate Once you've had a little experience with Media Center, the elaborate preferences screens will make a lot more sense. To access the advanced settings, select Tasks on the main Media Center menu, and then select Settings. Here, you'll find all sorts of ways to personalize Media Center. Most are self-explanatory, but here are a few items worthy of special note: 16.6.1. General On the General options screen, you can change the following: -
Startup and Windows Behavior . Should Media Center always stay on top of other windows, start up automatically when Windows starts, or allow alert messages to appear? -
Parental Controls . You can set up a four-digit password that stands between your kids and TV, movies, and DVDs that you consider too violent or racy for them. -
Optimization . Schedule a time to run these hard drive tune-up tasks, and they'll run automatically. You should configure this for a time when you won't be using the Media Center, but when the computer is also on and idle. 16.6.2. TV From the TV options page, you can change the following: -
Recorder . You can specify what drive your PC saves TV shows onto, the maximum TV limit, and recording quality. Figure 16-13 shows an example. | Figure 16-13. Use the + and - buttons to adjust the amount of storage you want to allot on your PC to hold media. This is an important option. Otherwise, you may one day discover that your PC keeps hanging because your 200 GB drive has 195 GB of Lost in Space or Star Trek on it. If you really want to record season after season of shows, consider changing the quality from Best to something else, or archiving them to DVDs and then erasing the hard-drive copies to free up space . | | There are plenty of options under Recording Defaults on this page. The ones you'll likely be most interested in are how to record TV series (do you want to record reruns or not?), how many shows you want to keep for a series before writing over the older ones, and when to start and stop program recordings (that is, a few minutes before or after the scheduled time). -
Guide . If you're having issues with the TV guide, visit this screen. You can edit the channel list, add channels, get the latest Guide listings and more. -
Set Up TV Signal . Don't go here unless you need to make changes to your TV signal setup. You might have to add or remove a set-top box, change cable or satellite companies, or upgrade your television service, for example. -
Configure Your TV or Monitor . If you're unhappy with how your display looks or if you've purchased a different display type, tell Media Center about it here. -
Closed Captioning . "Closed captioning" refers to subtitles that appear at the bottom of the TV screen. Closed captioning is a free service (paid for by the TV networks) and is great for loud rec rooms, workout rooms, parties, and anyone who's hard of hearing or learning to read. (If you tune into the football game with closed captioning on, people can follow it while listening to music. Loudly.) Note that even if you turn on closed captioning, not all television shows or television channels offer it. Tip: The Closed Captioning setting in TV Signal options doesn't affect DVDs.To make captions appear on DVDs, visit Tasks Settings DVD Closed Captioning. Even then, if your DVD doesnt show captions, you may have to open DVD Setup, described below, and turn on subtitles in your own language. 16.6.3. Pictures In Tasks Pictures, youll find options like these: -
Show pictures in random order, Show pictures in subfolders , Show caption . The only option that needs explanation here is "Show caption." It makes each photo's filename and date taken appear in the slideshow along with the picture. -
Show song information at the beginning or end of a song, Always, Never . That is, when you've added background music, do you want the name of the currently playing song (and the performer, album, and so on) to appear on the screen during the slideshow? -
Transition type . You have a couple of options for the way one photo fades into the next . -
Transition time can be between 2 seconds and a minute. Two or 3 seconds per photo is usually plenty. -
Slideshow background color can be black, white, or 50 percent gray. (If the photo fills the screen, of course, you don't see this background color. It appears only when the photo is, for example, an upright shot that leaves empty space on either side of your wide screen.) 16.6.4. Music From the Music options, you have only two choices: -
Visualizations . If you like to trip with the daisies while listening to music, check all of the visualizations (music-driven screen savers) here. -
Visualization Options . Make visualizations play every time music plays. Show song information at the beginning and end of a song, always, or never. 16.6.5. DVD From the DVD options, you can change the following: -
DVD Language . If you're into foreign films or want to learn a new language, change these options. Leave subtitles enabled or disable them, change the audio track to another language, and change the DVD menus to another language. For kicks, change the Menu language to Albanian. -
Closed Captioning . Again, easy enough. Turn on closed captioning when the media is muted, turn it off completely, or turn it on so it's on all the time. -
Remote Control Options . Change the Skip and Replay buttons to skip chapters, skip forward and back, or to change angles. 16.6.6. Library Setup On this screen, you can tell Media Center to "watch" a new folder (that is, to add the video, photo, or music contents of a folder on your hard drive to its listings automatically) or to stop watching one. |