Windows Media Center is an application designed to serve as a home-entertainment hub. It is included in Windows XP Media Center Edition and premium editions of Windows Vista (Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate). It is designed to be controlled by special remote controls which prominently feature the Green Button (similar to the logo to the right), but can also be operated with a mouse and/or keyboard. This button is used to either launch Media Center from Windows or to return to the Start Menu from within the application. Media Center visualizes the computer user's pictures, videos, and music from local hard drives, optical drives, and network locations. It then categorizes them by name, date, tags, and other file attributes. Media managed through Media Center can also be relayed via a home network to standard TV sets via the specially designed Windows Media Center Extender or the Xbox 360.
With the addition of TV tuner cards, Media Center can play back and record scheduled TV shows in either over-the-air High-definition TV, Digital Cable w/ CableCARD (1080i Premium HDTV) or standard antenna, cable, or satellite signal. While setting up the TV tuner, an IR (infrared) receiver or hardware is sought, such as a hand held remote control. After recording (which can be initiated either manually or scheduled via the program guide), it can then burn the shows to DVD or transfer them to a portable media player (with exceptions). Media Center originally had a limitation of 1 analog tuner, but was raised to 2 analog tuners with Media Center 2005. With Update Rollup 1 for Media Center 2005, support for a digital tuner was added, but an analog tuner must still be present for the digital tuner to function. With Rollup 2, up to 4 TV tuners can be configured (2 analog and 2 HDTV). All the tuners must use the same source, for example they must all be off an aerial or a set-top box using the same guide data, you cannot mix Sky Digital and DVB-T for example.
Hacks are available that remove the two-tuner limitation. Five DVB-T tuners have been confirmed to work simultaneously, but the maximum is unknown.
Media Center can stream live and pre-recorded television to Windows Media Center Extenders and to the Xbox 360 console, but other Windows computers can just access recorded content (not live).
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