16_577048 ch09.qxp 11/29/06 8:16 PM Page 248 Part IV Digital Media and Entertainment Chapter 10: Windows Media Player 11 Chapter 11: Enjoying Digital Photos Chapter 12: Making Movies and DVD Movies Chapter 13: Digital Media in the Living Room: Windows Media Center Chapter 14: Having Fun: Games and Vista 17_577048 pt04.qxp 11/29/06 8:16 PM Page 249 17_577048 pt04.qxp 11/29/06 8:16 PM Page 250 Windows Media Player 11 ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗࡗ ࡗ ࡗ In This Chapter Using Windows Media Player 11 Understanding the new visual user interface Working with digital music, photos, videos, and recorded TV Ripping and burning CDs Synchronizing with portable media devices, including the iPod Sharing your media library with other PCs, devices, and the Xbox 360 Accessing online music services ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ Chapter 10 18_577048 ch10.qxp 11/29/06 8:17 PM Page 251 ࡗ 252 Part IV: Digital Media and Entertainment ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ G ive Microsoft a little credit: When it launched its first all-in-one media player— Windows Media Player 7, with Windows Millennium Edition (Me) in 2000—the company made it clear that this product would be about more than just music: Today, Windows Media Player 11, the version that ships with Windows Vista, is dramatically improved, with support for music, videos, photos, recorded TV shows, streaming Internet media, and more. It really is an all-in-one solution for virtually all of your digital media needs — well, with one major exception: Windows Media Player 11 doesn’t natively sup- port Apple’s dominant iPod, the best-selling portable MP3 player on the planet. In this chapter, we’ll show you how to get the most of Windows Media Player 11. We’ll even show you how to make it work with the iPod. Media Player Basics As is the case throughout this book, we assume you’re familiar with basic operations in Windows and its many bundled applications. And Microsoft has included a very simple media player in Windows for over a decade, and a full-featured, all-in-one player since Windows Me. That said, Windows Media Player 11 can be fairly complicated if you don’t understand what it’s doing. So we’ll get started by examining this new Media Player and its core func- tionality. Setting Up Windows Media Player 11 The very first time you launch Windows Media Player 11, you’re forced to step through a quick wizard that enables you to configure various privacy options and optionally config- ure MTV’s URGE, an online music service that we discuss later in this chapter. Don’t just click Next here. Instead, you will want to very carefully read through the options that Microsoft presents. It’s possible to configure these options after the fact, of course, but it’s better to do so now, as you’ll see in a moment. On the first page of the wizard, you’re asked to choose between Express and Custom set-up choices. Always choose Custom. Express may be quicker, but it doesn’t give you access to the most important Windows Media Player 11 configura- tion options and instead chooses defaults that benefit Microsoft, not you. Secret After you choose Custom, you’ll be presented with the window shown in Figure 10-1, which is very similar to the initial dialog box that Windows Media Player 10 users saw on Windows XP. Here, you pick various privacy options. 18_577048 ch10.qxp 11/29/06 8:17 PM Page 252 ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ Chapter 10: Windows Media Player 11 ࡗ 253 Figure 10-1: Be sure to read through the options here very carefully. Don’t accept the default values. In the Enhanced Playback Experience section, you will want to weigh the second option very carefully. If you have a finely crafted media library, in which you’ve lovingly down- loaded and applied album art for all of your ripped music files, you will definitely want to clear the Update My Music Files by Retrieving Media Information from the Internet check box. If you don’t, you will find that your media library will, over time, become a jumbled mess as Media Player changes your nicely formatted music files to match what a third- party library on the Internet says are the correct song, album, and artist names, often with disastrous results. On the other hand, if you’re just starting out and intend to use Windows Media Player 11 to rip your CDs to the PC, leave this option checked. The other options should be pretty self-explanatory and none are as potentially destruc- tive as the option just discussed. You can leave the default options selected as is. When you click Next, you’re presented with a window that is new to Windows Media Player 11, allowing you to place Media Player shortcuts on the desktop and Quick Launch toolbar. If you think those shortcuts will be valuable, check the appropriate boxes and continue. The next window, too, is new to Windows Media Player 11. Here, you can choose to make Windows Media Player 11 the default music player for all of the media types it supports, or you can choose the exact file types that it will play. Obviously, this phase of setup is aimed at experts, and for the most part you should simply choose the first option, Make Windows Media Player 11 the default music and video player. However, if you have 18_577048 ch10.qxp 11/29/06 8:17 PM Page 253 strong feelings about using a different media player for specific file types, you can choose the second option. If you do so, you’ll be presented with a new Windows Vista feature: the Set associations for a program section of Control Pane shown in Figure 10-2. Here, you can configure which media file types will be associated with Windows Media Player 11. Figure 10-2: In previous Windows versions, this information was buried in the system and configured through Windows Media Player. Finally, you will be asked if you’d like to set up the URGE online music service. Select no. You can set up URGE at a later time if you want, and we’ll examine how to do this later in this chapter if you’re curious. You won’t be prompted to install URGE if your PC is not connected to the Internet. Understanding the Windows Media Player 11 User Interface Shown in Figure 10-3, Windows Media Player 11 is a dramatic departure from previous Windows Media Player versions, with a more visual media library view that relies heavily on album art and photo and video thumbnails. Also, Windows Media Player 11 adopts the Windows Vista look and feel, with glass-like window borders and the new black and blue Vista color scheme. tip ࡗ 254 Part IV: Digital Media and Entertainment ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ 18_577048 ch10.qxp 11/29/06 8:17 PM Page 254 Figure 10-3: It’s not your father’s media player: Windows Media Player 11 is more graphical, with rich views of your music, photos, and videos. Windows Media Player 11 ships with a small selection of sample music and video con- tent, which we’ll use for the examples in this part of the chapter. This lets you get started with the player even if you don’t have any content of your own. Compared to its predecessors, Windows Media Player 11 offers a number of improve- ments and changes. First, the player no longer uses a hokey, pseudo-rounded window that doesn’t quite work correctly (maximize Windows Media Player 10 in Windows XP to see what we mean by this). Instead, Windows Media Player 11 looks and acts like many other Windows Vista applications. The toolbar has been enhanced with Back and Forward buttons, which enable you to easily move between the Media Player experiences that are listed along the rest of the toolbar: Now Playing, Library (the default view), Rip, Burn, and Sync. Here’s how Back and Forward work. If you’re in the media library, denoted by a high- lighted Library toolbar button, and click the Rip toolbar button, you’ll find yourself trans- ported by the Media Player music ripping experience. Now, you can press Back to get back to the previous experience you visited (i.e., the media library). And if you do navi- gate back to the media library, you can click Forward to go back to Rip again. In short, the Forward and Back buttons work just like their equivalents in Internet Explorer and the Windows shell. tip ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ Chapter 10: Windows Media Player 11 ࡗ 255 18_577048 ch10.qxp 11/29/06 8:17 PM Page 255 Speaking of the right side of the toolbar, this area has been cleaned up substantially this time around. In Windows Media Player 10, there were Music, Radio, Video, and Online Stores buttons. Now, there is just an Online Stores button. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll see another new bit of user interface right below the toolbar. Here, there is a breadcrumb bar that helps you navigate through the various media libraries you’ll access in Windows Media Player 11 — Music (the default), Pictures, Video, Recorded TV, and Other Media — buttons for layout and view options, the new Instant Search box, and a button for toggling the player’s List Pane. The next sections discuss what each of these features does. Category Button and Breadcrumb Bar In Windows Media Player 10 (and 7, 8, and 9 for that matter), Microsoft divided up your media library by media type using an expanding tree view that many users found difficult to use. Regardless of your experience, however, the tree view was simply lousy because it made it too easy to get lost in large media libraries. Windows Media Player 11 does away with this, replacing the tree view with a breadcrumb bar (similar to what is used in the Windows Explorer address bar) that is triggered by the Category button. If you click this button, as shown in Figure 10-4, you can choose between the various media types Media Player supports and see only that part of the media library you need. By default, you will be in Music view, since most people use Windows Media Player to play music. You’ll notice that the breadcrumb bar to the right of the Category button lets you dive into your media library in various ways. For example, by default, the music por- tion of your media library is displaying your content by songs. But you can change this view by clicking on the various nodes in the breadcrumb bar. Say you wanted to view just the albums, and not the individual songs. To do so, click the arrow next to Library in the breadcrumb bar and select Albums. The view will now resemble Figure 10-5. What you see in the breadcrumb bar will depend on which section of the media library you are viewing. For example, music has options for albums, artists, songs, and genres, whereas video has options for all video, actors, genre, and rating. ࡗ 256 Part IV: Digital Media and Entertainment ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ You might notice that the Guide button is no longer available in the Media Player toolbar. You can still get to the Media Guide, however. To do so, click the small downward-pointing arrow under the Online Stores button on the far right of the toolbar and choose Media Guide from the resulting drop-down menu. This drop- down menu will appear only if you are online. Secret 18_577048 ch10.qxp 11/29/06 8:17 PM Page 256 Figure 10-4: Media Player isn’t just about music. Figure 10-5: Media Player’s media library view can be changed in a multitude of ways to match your preferences. ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ Chapter 10: Windows Media Player 11 ࡗ 257 18_577048 ch10.qxp 11/29/06 8:17 PM Page 257 [...]... playing item as zero stars (not rated) Ctrl +Windows Key+0 Rate the currently playing item as one star Ctrl +Windows Key+1 Rate the currently playing item two stars Ctrl +Windows Key+2 Rate the currently playing item three stars Ctrl +Windows Key+3 Rate the currently playing item four stars Ctrl +Windows Key+4 Rate the currently playing item five stars Ctrl +Windows Key +5 Toggle Mute F8 Decrease the volume F9... Ctrl +Windows Key+0 Rate the currently playing item as one star Ctrl +Windows Key+1 Rate the currently playing item two stars Ctrl +Windows Key+2 ࡗࡗࡗ Chapter 10: Windows Media Player 11 Video Operation Keyboard Shortcut Rate the currently playing item three stars Ctrl +Windows Key+3 Rate the currently playing item four stars Ctrl +Windows Key+4 Rate the currently playing item five stars ࡗ 269 Ctrl +Windows. .. at educating consumers about which devices work seamlessly with Windows Media Player Using Windows Media–Compatible Devices If you do go the Windows Media route, you’ll find that setup and configuration are simple: Just plug the device into your Windows Vista based PC and wait a few seconds while Vista configures drivers Then, launch Windows Media Player 11 and get to work You can synchronize music... player, Windows Media Player 11 is an excellent solution for managing and playing videos that have been saved to your PC’s hard drive These movies can be home movies you’ve edited with Windows Movie Maker (see Chapter 12) or videos you’ve downloaded from the Internet Windows Media Player also makes for an excellent DVD player Secret As with Windows XP, Microsoft doesn’t make it particularly easy in Windows. .. other Windows Vista based PCs with which you’d like to share media libraries This step isn’t required for Windows XP Next, you will want to configure Windows Media Player 11 for sharing To do so, open the Media Player, open the Library menu (by clicking the small arrow below the Library toolbar button) and choose Media Sharing This will display the Media Sharing dialog box shown in Figure 10- 15 Figure... we’re just concerned with sharing media content from a Windows Vista based PC 4 To play shared music, select the Music option to display the Music page Then, select Computer If this is the first time you’ve done this, Xbox 360 will need to download Windows Media Connect, which is the same software many devices use to stream media from Windows Vista based PCs After this download is completed, Xbox 360... Alternative genre, sorted by artist name Very cool Secret At the time of this writing, URGE is not supported on (x64) 64-bit versions of Windows Vista Microsoft tells us that this should be fixed by the time Windows Vista is made widely available to the public ࡗࡗࡗ Chapter 10: Windows Media Player 11 ࡗ 283 Figure 10-21: As you dive into URGE’s music collection, you’ll forget you’re dealing with a music collection... disks When you’re sure that you’re set up for audio CD creation, insert a blank CD Windows will display an Auto Play dialog boxes with two choices: Burn a CD (using Windows Media Player) or Burn files to disc (using Windows) You can choose the first option or dismiss the dialog box and navigate to the Burn experience in Windows Media Player by clicking the Burn button When you do so, Media Player displays... can only choose Extended Tiles view and not Icon or Details Instant Search In keeping with one of the biggest selling points of Windows Vista, Windows Media Player 11 includes an Instant Search box so that you can quickly find the content you want Annoyingly, the search box in Windows Media Player 11 is instant: As you type in the name of an artist, album, song, or other media information, the media library... sound Playing Recorded TV Shows If you’re using a Media Center PC, or a PC running Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate edition and a TV tuner card that’s connected to a TV signal, you have the capability to record TV shows (which we discuss in Chapter 13) TV shows recorded with Windows Media Center are aggregated by Windows Media Player 11 as well, and appear in the media library when you select Recorded . equivalents in Internet Explorer and the Windows shell. tip ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ Chapter 10: Windows Media Player 11 ࡗ 255 18 _57 7048 ch10.qxp 11/29/06 8:17 PM Page 255 Speaking of the right side of the toolbar,. box that Windows Media Player 10 users saw on Windows XP. Here, you pick various privacy options. 18 _57 7048 ch10.qxp 11/29/06 8:17 PM Page 252 ࡗ ࡗ ࡗ Chapter 10: Windows Media Player 11 ࡗ 253 Figure. in the Living Room: Windows Media Center Chapter 14: Having Fun: Games and Vista 17 _57 7048 pt04.qxp 11/29/06 8:16 PM Page 249 17 _57 7048 pt04.qxp 11/29/06 8:16 PM Page 250 Windows Media Player