Watching TV

The major attraction of Windows XP Media Center Edition is its PVR functionality, and thus the interface is well tuned for watching TV.

Hitting this button will launch Media Center

In order to launch the Media Center interface all you do is hit the green button on the remote; alternatively you could select Media Center from the Start Menu, but the remote control is the preferred way of launching the app.

Firing up the Media Center interface, the first option you're greeted with will start the TV interface. The window in the lower left hand corner does not always appear, it is where your TV/video playback will remain if you navigate away from the playback page. The small window is relatively useless, given the amount of space available on the screen we would have much rather had a larger window such as the one you see on the TV page below:

The initial TV startup will take several seconds as the engine is started and MCE begins buffering (~15 seconds on our HP test system), but after the initial startup you won't encounter that delay any longer. What's important to note is that MCE can switch channels faster than any set-top PVR, this is thanks to the incredible hardware power of a PC.

From this screen you can jump into the program guide, look through shows you've recorded, search for something to watch or configure the TV options. We'll start off by figuring out what to watch using the program guide.

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