In case you hadn’t noticed previously we’ve added a pair of new Media Center themes to our Download Center. Future themes and updates will appear in the Download Center section and users can email their themes as attachments to mhealy@hack7mc.com to have them added to the section. This new pair of themes comes from a Hack7MC reader, Steve Firestone (thewarm). Both themes are created to be used with Media Center Studio and since this program has been having issues lately adjusting the start menu items we’ve included a fix for this as well at the end. Hopefully we’ll see further updates to the MC Studio program soon.

The first of the themes, called Black Desert, features a black background with 3D style blocks as well as a handful of custom start menu icons. To use the theme using will need to have Media Center Studio. Import the theme file from the Themes tab and you’ll see a new selection available on the main themes window. Select the new theme and press the Apply button under the Themes tab. That should be all there is to changing your Media Center theme.

The second theme, also from Steve, is called A Touch of Red. This theme is a variation of the original with a slightly varied layout of the blocks and a slight touch of red on the forward side.

Both themes are a sleek addition to any budding Media Center theme collection and are very usable inside the Media Center interface. Users may have noticed that a recent update to the Media Center software has left certain features of the Media Center Studio program not working. The update seems to have added what actually appears it may be a simpler replacement for editing the start menu items, though it’s not currently supported by the Media Center Studio software.

For now there are a few temporary fixes around though to get your start menu back the way you like it. The simplest solution is a handy tool created by Tyborg of The Green Button forums. Simply download the zip file, extract to somewhere accessible and run the program. This will make the changes (described in more detail later) necessary to allow MC Studio editing of the start menu possible once more. In order to keep these changes through future updates the author advises us to add the file to our startup folders or schedule the program to run regularly. Find even more details or follow the discussion here at TGB forums.

What the program does is to rename a couple of files created in a recent update to Media Center. If you’ve got an aversion to handy tools or it doesn’t seem to work for you try the following. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to C:ProgramDataMicrosofteHomePackagesMCEClientUX. Inside you’ll find two folders: dSM and dSM-2 with files inside each. To revert to the old method rename the files in these folders. Users have reported more permanent success by created a set of text files with the names of the originals and removing all access to the files.

That should have Media Center Studio’s start menu functions operating again.

Source Article:
Pair of Themes and an MC Studio Fix

Not satisfied with the default setting of seven rows of channels displayed in the episode guide of Windows 7 Media Center? Unfortunately, there is no option to enable an increased number of rows to appear so increasing the rows displayed requires users to do extensive editing to the Media Center DLL files. Thankfully, Bill24 has posted a guide to the editing required on the Australian Media Center Community. This guide is fairly advanced for those not familiar with editing DLL files however so we’ve created a small patch to allow users to easily make the edits to the Media Center shell file. You’ll still need to follow the beginning portion of the guide though and we’ve also included the actual edits made in the original article for those interested in the data behind the changes.

To get started decide whether you’ll be using the patch or editing your Media Center shell DLL by hand. If the patch doesn’t work you’ll likely need to edit the file by hand as updated or altered versions of the Media Center shell DLL could cause the patch to no longer work properly. If using the patch download it here, otherwise you’ll need a program to edit the file by hand such as Resource Hacker or Restorator. Also, a copy of Media Center Studio is required.

The first step is launching Media Center Studio and creating a new theme. Bill24 doesn’t mention in the guide what changes this makes to the Media Center files that makes it a required step, it may be a simple matter of setting the correct permissions on the required Media Center DLL files. Once inside Media Center Studio select the New button to create a new theme, name your new theme and save the file. Return to the main themes listing tab and select the newly created them then press the Apply button. Launch Media Center and browse to the EPG guide, unless additional edits were made inside Media Center Studio nothing should have changed.

Alternatively, if you’ve got the Take Ownership registry file applied you can take ownership of the MediaCenter.Shell.dll file to affect the same results.

Now open Windows Explorer and browse to C:Windowsehome and locate the MediaCenter.Shell.dll file. Copy the file to another location and make certain to create a backup of this file as well just incase something should go wrong during the process. Now, if using the patch method, copy the patch into the same directory as MediaCenter.Shell.dll and apply the patch to this file. Afterward copy the file back into the C:Windowsehome directory. Relaunch Windows 7 Media Center and check your EPG guide, there should now be ten rows listed.

For those editing the file by hand open the MediaCenter.Shell.dll in your resource editor and browse to the html –> EPG.MCML file. Inside search for the following lines and edit the values as described:

Name=”InitialGridPosition” Left=”FilterButton,1,1″ Right=”Parent,1,-53″ Top=”FilterButton,0, –44
Name=”InitialGridPosition” Left=”FilterButton,1,1″ Right=”Parent,1,-53″ Top=”FilterButton,0, -134

Set Target=”[FilterButtonLayout.Bottom.Offset]” Value=“493”
Set Target=”[FilterButtonLayout.Bottom.Offset]” Value=“580”

Set Target=”[Table.VisibleRowCapacity]” Value=“7”
Set Target=”[Table.VisibleRowCapacity]” Value=“10”

Font FontName=”global://comm:LightFontFace” FontSize=“48”
Font FontName=”global://comm:LightFontFace” FontSize=“0”

“2″/>
“4″/>

After changing each of these values save the MediaCenter.Shell.dll file and place it back in it’s original location. Relaunch Windows 7 Media Center and browse to the EPG guide to ensure that you’ve now got ten rows listed.

Thanks to Bill24 for sharing this information with the Windows 7 Media Center community! Be sure to check out his blog on the Australian Media Center Community website for even more great information on modifying Media Center. This certainly is a more efficient usage of screen real-estate than the original seven row display.

Source Article:
Increasing the Default Number of Rows in the EPG