Before you tour MCE's interface — that is, the navigational and graphical elements that help you get around the program — you need to open Media Center itself. You can do this in one of three ways: by double-clicking a shortcut on the desktop, by clicking the Start button on the taskbar of your desktop and choosing Media Center, or by pressing the green button on your MCE remote control.
MCE Start menu
When you enter Media Center for the very first time, Windows XP MCE sends you into a setup wizard. However, before you explore that, you should become acquainted with some of MCE's navigation and usage standards, so you know what to expect when you see the MCE interface — wizard or not — for the first time. So in this article, you find out about the overall look and feel of XP MCE, even though you're not launching MCE just yet.
When you enter Media Center, you see the main Media Center Start menu (see Figure 1). This screen presents you with a single, unified, full-screen portal for all your entertainment needs. Everyone should have one, don't you think?
Figure 1: The Media Center Start menu is your jumping-off point.
The date and time are prominently displayed in the center of the screen, with the Media Center modules listed alongside. The modules are in a loop, so you can cycle through them.
At the bottom left of the screen is an inset window that shows the media currently playing. This window is called, not surprisingly, the Now Playing window. The media playback toolbar is below the inset window. (Microsoft refers to this toolbar as the desktop controls toolbar, but everyone else, it seems, prefers the name media playback toolbar.) The media playback toolbar gives you direct access to the entertainment in the forefront of your screen. Here you can change channels (- and +), pause, play, stop, rewind, fast forward, mute, and change volume (= and +). This playback toolbar appears whenever you move your mouse
At the top left of the screen are three buttons. From left to right, they
Let you quickly log off to end your Media Center session or to switch users
Return you to the main Media Center Start menu, like the Go Back button on your remote
Access Media Center Help
An on-screen volume control gives you a visual view of the volume level and indicates when the audio is muted. This volume control shows up when you adjust the volume using the remote control and disappears after a few seconds. In addition, a phone call notification (using Caller ID) shows you who is calling and the phone number — you need to have a phone line plugged into your MCE PC for this to work, of course.
For the Caller ID feature to work, you also need Caller ID service from your phone company (you probably guessed that) and TAPI-compliant modem in your MCE PC. TAPI (Telephone Application Program Interface) is a Microsoft standard for modems that lets them do regular phone stuff, including Caller ID. Check with your MCE PC vendor if you don't know whether the modem you have is TAPI compliant.
The upper right of the screen has the standard Windows tools for minimizing, resizing, and closing the window. You can use the minimize capability to keep Media Center running while you work in another program elsewhere on the screen.
Navigating in Media Center
At the beginning of any software project, programming firms create a document that defines the usage conventions for the software. As programmers develop the code, they reference these conventions so that the process of moving, scrolling, selecting, adding, deleting, and so on is similar throughout the program. Here are the key usage conventions used in MCE:
Navigating: To move around and select menu items, you use the arrow buttons on the remote control, the arrow keys on your keyboard, or the mouse. You can get everywhere in MCE using only the arrow buttons on the remote. To see everything in long Media Center menus or option listings, you use the arrow buttons (or arrow keys or mouse) to select the scroll buttons at the bottom-right side of the screen, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Scrolling through long menus in Media Center.
Highlighting: MCE indicates that you have successfully navigated to an item by highlighting it in green. The highlight is different depending on the item. An item represented by a thumbnail or an icon — a picture, movie, folder, file, and so on — becomes outlined with a bright green border. A button or a check box turns green.
Selecting: To choose an item or an option, navigate to it (the item or option becomes highlighted), and press the OK button on the remote control, press the Enter key on the keyboard, or click the mouse button.
If a media selection is playing in the Now Playing inset window, you can switch to full-screen mode by navigating to the inset window (the frame turns green), and then clicking the OK button on the remote.
When you're navigating in the MCE interface, just remember three things: arrow buttons, green highlight, OK button. Selecting is that simple.
MCE remote control
The core component around which the entire Media Center concept revolves is the remote control, shown in Figure 3. Microsoft is perfecting the 10-foot experience for users — the ability to access content from 10 feet away. To that end, Microsoft has minimized the number of buttons on the remote to keep your interface with the program as simple as possible.
Figure 7-3: A typical Windows XP Media Center Edition remote control.
Central to this remote control, as you've undoubtedly noticed, is the big green button. It's so prominent that there's even a Windows MCE Web site named after it. This button always brings you to the main Start menu for Media Center.
Not all MCE PC remote controls look the same, but almost all have the same general functionality. You might find the DVD Menu button located by the navigation buttons on an HP remote control, for instance, but sandwiched between the VOL and CH/PG buttons on the Windows-standard MCE remote. The DVD Menu button works the same in both instances, however, taking you straight to the main menu of the DVD movie.
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