Beginners Guide My Movies for Windows Media Center

The following steps will help you get started with My Movies for Windows Media Center.
Step 1: View Your Collection
Step 2: View Title
Step 3: View Trailers
Step 4: View Persons
Step 5: Change Settings

To be able to view your collection in Windows Media Center you must login and create your collection in My Movies Collection Management for Windows. Read more about My Movies Collection Management and how to get started with this.

The basic functionalities of our Windows products are free to use, but to get extended features to enhance the movie experience you can purchase points, or contribute title data to earn contribution points. View the feature table to see how many points the individual features requires. Read more about product pricing and contribution and purchase points.

-Step 1: View Your Collection

Once you are logged in to My Movies Collection Management and have added titles to your collection it will be visible in the Windows Media Center. Collection Management do not need to be open, you just need to be logged in. Windows Media Center has a built-in movie library which is placed between the music and the TV library, your My Movies Collection library is placed at the top of the start page just below the 'Extra' strip. You can hide the default Windows Media Center library from the Collection Management settings, so that you only have one movies library displayed in the Media Center. In the 'Movies' strip choose 'movie library' to browse your collection.

If you have any TV series in your collection they will be placed in the TV series library just below the 'Movies' strip. The TV series library is similar to the movies library.

The menu is placed above the collection. From here you can access view, sort, list and search.

Views
You can choose between different views, to change view click the menu option 'view' and choose one of the options:

Cover strip

The default view is Cover strip which displays two strips of covers, with the name of the selected title beneath and the menu above.

Covers full screen

Show three rows of covers hiding the menu.

Covers and details (requires 500 points)

One side of the screen shows covers, and the other shows details of the title.

Covers centered (requires 1000 pints)

Show full screen covers with the selected cover always centered.

Cover row and details (requires 1000 pints)

Shows a single row of covers and details of the selected title above.

List and details

Shows a list of title and details of the selected title.

By default all your titles are displayed in alphabetic order. You can change the:
Sorting and
Listing as well as
Searching for a specific title.

Sort
By default your collection is sorted according to the title. You can change how your collection is sorted by changing which criteria to sort from. Choose 'sort' in the menu, from here you can choose to sort:

List
You can choose which title selection to display by changing the list. Choose 'list' from the menu, from here you can choose to display:

Search
You can search for a specific title by using the search function placed in the menu. Choosing 'search' will open the search window where you can type search words in the field, the search result will be displayed to the right.

-Step 2: View Title

To view title details choose a title from the movie library and the detail view will open. Here you find information about the title, a trailer (if one is available), a synopsis, cast and crew, audio and subtitles, similar movies (requires 2500 points) and you have the option to change watched status, add to a category (created in Collection Management) as well as removing the title. From the main view of the title you can enlarge the front and back cover, and you can start playback of the title if it is stored on your PC or server, otherwise it will prompt you to insert the disc.

-Step 3: View Trailers

Through the trailer library you have access to trailers of upcoming movies or movies currently or recently in cinema. You access the trailer library in the 'Movies' strip on the start page.

To view the trailer choose the title to open the title details from where you can play the trailer or read a synopsis. You can choose the list view to display titles that a currently in cinema, are coming in cinema or latest in cinema from the list option in the menu.

-Step 4: View Persons

In the person view you can see profiles of actors and directors including picture, biography and which titles they star or direct in your collection. The person library is placed in the TV series strip on the start page. The listing can be changed to display all persons, all roles, popular, actors, directors, writers, producers, cinematographers, editors, music crew, sound crew and art crew.

From the person library you can choose an actor to view details of the person.

-Step 5: Change Settings

From the menu within the movie, TV series and person library you can access the settings menu. From here you can change various settings for the libraries as well as view, navigation and more.

You can also change settings from the Collection Management. To do this open the 'Tools' menu and choose 'Options'. The first three topics concerns the Media Center.

For further help please visit our How-To section for articles and video tutorials.