To use this new feature make sure you’ve got the latest version of Media Browser, from the forums at mediabrowser.tv, installed. Also, be sure that your content has been properly tagged with the ratings metadata. To do that you can use the popular metadata tool MetaBrowser (or any other tool of your choice that supports the ratings tag). Make sure that each movie or piece of media in the collection contains a proper rating to ensure that your parental control selection will be effective.

Inside MetaBrowser you can set the rating of each listed item by selecting the title in the left hand pane then adjusting the MPAA Rating dropdown to the appropriate rating for each movie. Be sure to press the Save Metadata after each movie has been edited to be certain your selection is saved to the metadata of that movie. Remember, the parental controls will only be as effective as the ratings employed in the collection.

Once you’ve assigned ratings to your media collection it’s time to open up Media Browser’s configuration and setup the parental controls feature. Inside the configuration program be sure to select the Advanced options selection from the top to enable the extra options then open the new parental controls tab. Here you can set the maximum rating allowed to be viewed by everyone in the household as well as the pin number to unlock content.

You also have the option to hide blocked content until the pin is entered. This will remove all titles from the listing that are above the maximum rating until pressing the “lock” button on the main Media Browser window, next to the configuration wrench, and entering the pin number. Unchecking this option leaves the titles in the listing and will prompt for the pin when attempting to play the content. Also included is the option to unlock all content for a period of time once the pin number is entered. This will keep you from having to repeatedly enter the pin while using Media Browser for extended periods but also makes the system vulnerable should you leave the machine unattended in that time.

That’s all there is to it! Just re-launch your Windows 7 Media Center and start up Media Browser to see the new parental controls in effect. There are sure to be many happy parents happy to see this feature added to the Media Browser plugin and the ease of setup makes the system even more effective though the lynch pin here is still in the rating system itself. You need to be certain that your entire collection is properly tagged before the system becomes effective.

Source Article:
Using Media Browser’s Parental Control Features

To get started My Movies 3 can be downloaded from the My Movies website. Downloading the plugin is completely free and the basic features are free for everyone to use but there are limitations built into the software. Users who haven’t used the My Movies software previously are likely to be surprised by the limitations. My Movies uses an Xbox Marketplace style points system for purchasing extra features. Points can be had for participating in the submission of movie metadata to any titles with less than adequate metadata or can be purchased for cold hard cash. A full compliment of features will set you back a whopping $50 if you should choose the cash route.

My Movies uses a collection management application to manage the titles in your movie collection. This setup allows you to install a server/client setup to enable storing your collection data at a single machine and network the data between multiple computers. This is certainly a plus, allowing edits to metadata and images to be propagated across a users entire network without needing to make the changes on each machine. Collection management applications are becoming a much more popular alternative to downloaded or handcrafted text/xml files to store metadata for your movie collection and proves to be much more user friendly.

For those opting to add points to their account through submitting metadata, they can do so through the collection management application. Simply locate any titles in your collection that contain less than adequate metadata, indicated by a yellow or red indicator icon next to the title. These titles are able to be updated inside the management application and will then ask you to submit your additional data to the My Movies service. You’ll need to read the guidelines first and agree to the terms of the service or face penalties including suspension of your account. The guidelines are an effort to prevent questionable data from being entered into the central system and keep the metadata complete and clean and curb submitting data simply for points.

Onto the real meat of the plugin, the actual Media Center application, we see a familiar interface similar to other popular movie collection plugins such as Media Browser and Open Media Library. This is actually a departure for My Movies, formerly featuring a more menu based interface reminiscent of the original Media Center. The interface has been updated to reflect the Windows 7 Media Center style but has run into some growing pains along the way.

As you can see in the image above, My Movies uses the default style to output the movie title, date and rating information. The problem comes in when the movie title extends to cover the majority of the third row, obscuring the view. To complicate the situation further, stopping on a single title for approximately four seconds results in the entire display fading into the fan art view and hiding the collection completely.

The other view available to users without the appropriate point levels, list view, suffers the same problem with the fan art display. Stopping on a single title fades the view making reading the listing impossible. Though the list view does have a description of each movie as well as ratings, dates, cast and crew and more information that remains visible.

For those not opting to go the metadata submission route the other two collection views will run you $20 and $40 respectively for covers with details or centered covers. While probably the biggest included feature, disc copying, costs a full $50 to unlock the feature. While this is likely a killer feature for a select few many will likely be content with ripping their disks on a networked pc and simply transferring them with plenty of free software available to get the job done.

Despite setbacks in the interface design, once they’re addressed My Movies 3 looks to provide a feature complete solution to browsing and even growing your Windows 7 Media Center movie library. The collection manager is solid and easy to use for even the newest of users and the plugin interface meshes very well with the default Windows 7 Media Center design making for a seamless integration into an existing system. Unfortunately, considering these usability problems and the price involved in unlocking many features that are included free with other Windows 7 Media Center plugins, disc copying aside, it’s hard to recommend My Movies 3 over the alternatives.

Source Article:
Popular My Movies plugin comes to Windows 7 Media Center

Just hover over the value area for any given detail and a text entry box will appear allowing editing of that value. Unfortunately, not all the values are displayed or editable inside this basic metadata editor. There are a number of additional meta values that can be used to customize the categorization of files such as genre and whether or not a particular file is a movie.

Fortunately, there is a third-party program created by Steven Toub that’s perfectly capable of editing these hidden metadata values in both DVRMS and WTV files. His DVRMS metadata editor is quite old at this point but still works quite well with both file types. When opening a WTV file you’ll just need to adjust the file filter dropbox to show all file types and select the WTV file you’d like to edit.

As you can see, Toub’s editor provides a much more comprehensive listing of metadata values available inside DVRMS and WTV files than the built-in editor. Having access to the genre and movie meta tags and well as title, description and HD designations makes this an excellent tool for anyone looking to convert their movie collections to the new WTV format standard in Windows 7.

There are a few reasons some may be considering converting their collections to WTV, not least of which is the ability to play the format on any Windows Media Extender. This means not having to deal with the issues that seem to plague other formats such as .mkv on extenders. We’ll be covering more on this movement as software becomes publicly available to facilitate the switch such as the next version of DVRMSToolbox from Andy VT’s blog.

When you’ve finished editing metadata details inside Toub’s editor just hit the Save Metadata button to commit the changes and that’s all there is to it.