Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Features

A clean new look for menus, taskbars, and a host of new themes and screensavers – including the cool new Goldfish Aquarium – add a personalized touch.

The premium Windows user desktop designed specially for the Home with more personal computing in mind.

All of your entertainment choices are in one place: live and recorded TV, movies and videos, music, photos, radio, and on-demand entertainment.

Access all of your entertainment experiences from one place, without the need for separate audio/video components.

Capture, personalize, and share home movies more easily with over 100 transitions and effects, titles, and credits, and built-in support for burning DVDs you can play in most home DVD players.¹

Easily create and share home movies with family and friends that you can send in e-mail for instant viewing, or preserve on CDs and DVDs.

Easily share pictures and home movies, burn CD mixes, and back up recorded TV on DVD with built-in DVD burning. Even create your own video slideshows from photos and music, all from Windows Media Center.¹

A consistent, familiar way to burn DVDs and CDs for backup or sharing personal memories with family and friends that's simple enough that you can do it with a remote control.

Use the Scanner and Camera Wizard to transfer digital photos from your camera to your computer. Perform basic edits, such as cropping, using Microsoft Photo Editor. The My Pictures folder in Windows XP offers a variety of options for viewing or managing your digital pictures. From within My Pictures, you can view photos at different sizes, rotate them, view a slide show, print photos, or copy photos to a CD.

Helps you get the most from your digital memories by using tools that let you quickly transfer photos from your camera to your Media Center PC and navigate, view, print, edit, and centrally manage your photo collection from one place.

Includes a host of new or improved digital media features and tools including a CD/DVD Label Maker, Windows Party Mode for secure playback of music, Windows Dancers that move to your music on your desktop, and Audio Converter for saving space on your PC or portable music player.

Have more fun and be more productive with your digital media and get popular features that offer more for everyone in the family.

DirectX 9 hardware support is a requirement for Media Center Edition 2005 PCs, improving your overall gaming experience.

Helps you enjoy advanced graphics and gaming better than Windows-based PCs not designed to support the latest DirectX technology.

Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 is the first consumer OS built on top of the Windows XP Home and Service Pack 2 (SP2) foundation with Advanced Security Technologies including Windows Firewall, Pop-up Blocker for Internet Explorer, and the new Windows Security Center, all while offering all of the features available today in Windows XP Home Edition.

Choose from the widest range of software, hardware, and services all designed to work together more securely while helping to protect your PC against viruses, hackers, and worms.

New products based on Media Center are designed to look and work like a smart home theater component, combining personal TV recording, DVD playback, all your music, photos, and videos in one easy to use place. New features enable easier setup with just a remote control, improved support for high definition displays and content playback, and surround sound audio.

Enjoy a single device that looks, sounds, and acts like it fits in your home theater in an intuitive way but with high-end features and nearly limitless expansion possibilities.

New setup features include improved video calibration features for standard and high definition displays, intuitive TV setup, wireless networking setup and configuration of background installation of critical Windows Updates. Once set up, Media Center can automatically take you to the Media Center Start menu for easy control with a remote control, hiding the traditional Windows desktop environment.

A simple, consumer-friendly setup experience out of the box that gets you started more quickly while delivering a consistent Media Center experience.

Know who's calling with Caller-ID display in Media Center and now chat with friends – all from the couch with Messenger for Media Center. Or just set Do Not Disturb when you're watching a movie or don't want to be bothered.¹

Skip getting up from the couch to grab the phone and Instant Message while watching the same TV program, movie or more with friends online.

New Media Center remote control designs, now optional from PC manufacturers and after-market providers offer more flexibility with features such as single-button control of power for both your TV and Media Center.

Faster, easier control of your digital entertainment with the familiarity of a standard remote control.

Media Center delivers a powerful yet familiar way to enjoy all of your digital entertainment – photos, music, TV, Home Videos, radio and a world of applications and services, all designed for easy viewing whether you're sitting in front of your Windows desktop or full-screen, across the room with a remote control. The easy-to-navigate menu screens feature customizable sound prompts, 3D animated transitions, and backgrounds.¹

Store, share, and enjoy your photos, music, home video, and even live and recorded TV or time-shifted radio in one sleek and easy-to-use place that's easy to control from a remote control or keyboard and mouse.

My Music offers simple access to your personal and online music collection via music services. Now it's easier than ever to play a music CD, copy it into your library, create a playlist on the fly just like a jukebox, save as a playlist, or edit album details such as ratings used by smart jukebox features like Smart Playlists. By default, albums can be browsed by album cover or alternately by artist, songs, genres, or searched. Also included is built-in support for Audio CD burning directly from Media Center.

Easily browse, organize, and play your music collection, designed for the convenience of a remote control. Then burn music playlists to Audio CDs you can play in CD players.

My Pictures, accessible from the start screen makes it easy to view your photo collections by folder and sort by date and folder. Import photos from digital cameras or memory cards without hassle and instantly view as a slideshow, complete with music soundtrack and smooth zoom effects. Enhanced photo editing technology from Microsoft Research makes it easy to rotate, crop, and fix color on photos. Then print directly from Media Center or share photos online, all with a remote control.

A fun new way to instantly enjoy and share your digital photos. Use the remote control to view your pictures and graphics, play an instant slide show, touch up photos, and burn photos to CD or even DVD slideshows.

My TV offers a simple, quick responding menu for easy access to all of your TV watching and personal video recording activities including Live TV, Recorded TV, the Electronic Programming Guide (EPG), Guide Search, and the new Movie Finder² service all without a monthly service fee.

My TV offers a simple way to discover, browse, watch, and record TV programs, even on multiple channels at the same time. TV features work with any cable or satellite setup with fast and easy setup.

The new Movie Finder² makes it easy to find movies you love to watch and record available on your lineup or online. Browse Top Rated movies, New Releases, movies on now or showing in the next hour. Search by genre, cast, director, and more.

Get the most value out of your cable or satellite TV package by easily discovering and recording movies already available on your lineup, or discover how to rent new movies or old favorites with online movie services.

Media Center 2005 now supports full live TV and personal video recording support for ATSC Digital TV (480p) and High Definition TV (720p/1080i) local network TV programming delivered via UHF antenna. Setup is seamless and requires only a zip code with Digital TV channels showing up completely integrated into your Electronic Program Guide in an unused channel range. (For more information on antennas and channel availability, visit www.antennaweb.org).³

Enjoy true Digital and High Definition local TV programming and personal video recording without compromises and no monthly service fees.

Media Center 2005 supports multiple-tuner configurations in a maximum of two standard tuners, and for US customers, the addition of one over-the-air DTV/HDTV tuner.⁴

Never miss your favorite shows – even when they're on different channels at the same time, or the big game goes into overtime.

Full progressive-scan DVD playback with online chapter lookup on Media Center PCs equipped with a 3rd party DVD decoder (standard on new PC configurations).

Enjoy DVD movies, skip through tracks with common-sense track titles, and enjoy the clarity offered by progressive-scan playback and surround sound on equipped Media Center PCs.

My Videos offers an alternate view of your My Videos folder in Windows XP, organizing files and folders by date or by name and displaying a thumbnail image for each clip. Supports common video types including standard .AVIs, .MPG, and .WMV files as well as any additional formats supported by Windows Media Player 10.

Organize and enjoy home movies, downloaded videos from online services, and more in a single place.

My Radio organizes all installed radio services including Internet and FM radio into a single place. For PC equipped with FM Radio, support for presets and "Trick Play" technology offers the ability to rewind and play back up to 30 minutes of FM radio at any given time.

My Radio offers instant access to your radio services. FM Radio listeners have simple access to radio presets just like a car stereo, and can even pause and rewind up to 30 minutes of live radio.

Online Spotlight is an online guide offering quick and easy access to a wide range of music and radio services, movie download and on-demand services, and information services offer instant access to customized sports, news, and entertainment programming online.¹

Media Center PCs support a wide and growing range of applications that are optimized for remote control as well as keyboard and mouse, and new scenarios beyond the home office. Online Spotlight is your portal into a wide and growing range of free and premium online music, movie, entertainment, and information services.

The More Programs menu option organizes all of your installed applications and services designed for Media Center in one place. Examples include Sync to Device, CD/DVD Burning, Messenger in Media Center, and 3rd party applications.

More Programs offers simple organization and access to Media Center-enhanced applications and services installed and available on your Media Center PC.

For more information read the Media Center Extender Overview.

Enjoy live and recorded TV, music, photos, and games on any TV set in the home with Windows Media Center Extender devices – even while using the Media Center PC.

For more information, read Windows Media Center Extender for Xbox.

Enjoy your photos, music, video, live and recorded TV, and online services in a fun, and affordable way.

Portable Media Center devices can take hours upon hours of TV, Music, and Video as well as thousands of photos for viewing and listening enjoyment on the go and all with the same familiar Media Center look and feel. Use the new Auto Sync feature for Windows Media Player 10 and Windows Media Center to automatically sync either all of your media, or just the content you want from your Media Center PC to a Portable Media Center device.

Enjoy your Media Center's photos, recorded, TV, music, movies, and more while on the go with these next-generation portable entertainment players now available in stores.

Sync music to your Windows Media Player 10-compatible portable music player directly from within Media Center. Hot-pluggable, you can even undock at any time and pick up where you left off on next sync. View sync status in Media Center, set up sync order and lists from your remote control.

Transfer music and more to over 70 portable music players designed for Windows Media Player 10 and new devices carrying the PlaysforSure logo.

Setup support improvements in Windows XP SP2 and the new Wireless Network Setup Wizard in Media Center make it easier to configure or connect to wireless home networks.

Easily set up and connect Wi-Fi network devices such as access points and wireless PCs on your home network.

New built-in support for common Bluetooth drivers and profiles.

Enables you to easily connect to the latest Bluetooth-enabled hardware devices such as keyboards, cell phones, and PDAs.