Online fun in Windows Media Center—TV and News

See cool shows, concerts, news clips, and more

By Michael Stroh

Watching TV used to be pretty simple: You grab the remote, flick on the tube, and kick back on the couch.

But the Internet has changed the rules. Today’s cutting-edge couch potatoes shun routine schedules. To accommodate them, more mainstream broadcasters are archiving their shows online. Meanwhile, a whole new breed of popular Internet-only video clips and programs has cropped up. What’s a TV junkie to do?

If you have Windows Media Center, the slick multimedia jukebox that comes with the Home Premium and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista, you don’t have to worry. As I recently discovered, Media Center contains a constantly-changing trove of TV shows, concerts, news clips, and online videos. It’s there to watch on your schedule, and it’s mostly free. Plus, if you’ve got the right equipment (more on that later), you can also stream these shows from your PC back to your TV where it belongs.

I want my Internet TV

To be truthful, I’ve never had much interest in watching TV on my computer. For starters, it means I'd have to buy and install a TV tuner card. My computer is also in my home office, and let me tell you, there’s a good reason why the term “desk potato” never caught on.

And that’s where the latest addition to the Media Center feature lineup—Internet TV—can help. “One of the big things we hear from customers," says Eddie Fusaro, the Microsoft program manager who oversees Internet TV, "is they want a TV-like experience even when they don’t have a TV tuner installed." So while it looks just fine on a computer, Internet TV is really designed to be viewed from the couch with a remote in hand, says Fusaro.

You can access Internet TV from the start screen in Windows Media Center by scrolling to TV + Movies, and then selecting internet tv. Internet TV is currently only available in the U.S.

Nearly all of the more than 100 hours of programming on Internet TV comes from MSN and is categorized by genre. There are critically acclaimed TV shows such as Arrested Development, sports clips, and movie trailers for all the top box office draws and rentals. The movie trailers category is one of Fusaro's favorites. “My wife and I use this all the time,” Fusaro says. “We pick something that we’d both like to rent before I drive over to the video store.”

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From giggling babies to gangsta rap

One of my favorite Internet TV offerings is the “viral” category, which is basically an editor's pick of the funniest, oddest, or most interesting videos burning up the Internet. On one recent day, the selection included everything from a guy getting whacked by a tennis ball to a nerdy kid dancing like a robot to a maniacally giggling baby (a video guaranteed to cure any bad mood, trust me).

Fusaro says an editorial team handpicks most of the content on Internet TV, with news clips and other selected content changing daily.

Another big hit in my family are Internet TV’s live concerts. My 3-year-old son and I both love music, and he’s always pestering me to put on (I swear) AC/DC or Eric Clapton concert DVDs so he can rock out on his air guitar. Last time I checked, Internet TV had a great lineup of musicians designed to appeal to adults and precocious metalhead toddlers alike: John Mayer, Maroon 5, Oasis, Snoop Dogg, Velvet Revolver, Michael Buble, The Pussycat Dolls, and more.

According to Fusaro, the concerts also illustrate one way Internet TV is superior to the experience of watching videos through a web browser. In many cases, Internet TV videos are higher quality and optimized for a larger TV screen (although to see the higher-quality offerings, you’ll also need a speedy broadband connection).

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Do-it-yourself newscasts

As a former journalist, I'm an information hound and always on the hunt for interesting or offbeat news clips. Not only does Internet TV have a nice selection, but by selecting a video and then pressing the RECORD button on your remote control (or CTRL+R on your keyboard), you can play them in any order you like. “Basically I can create my own custom newscast,” Fusaro says.

Nor is Internet TV the only place you can find great news or TV programming in Media Center. You'll also discover lots of great content tucked away in the Online Media category. (To find it from the start screen, scroll to Online Media, and then select explore.)

Scroll to news + sports, for example, to watch or listen to news from Reuters, NPR, Yahoo! Sports, and Fox Sports. Or scroll to tv + movies, where you’ll find shows from Comedy Central, the Discovery Channel, TLC, and even kids shows like Zoey 101 and Jimmy Neutron from Nickelodeon.

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From TV to PC...and back

One question you’re probably asking is: how do you watch Media Center on a TV?

In my apartment, my computer hums away out of sight in my home office. But by using my Xbox 360, I can still watch Internet TV and other Media Center offerings on the 42-inch TV that's sitting right there in my living room.

The Xbox 360 acts as a Media Center “Extender,” which is a really dull name for a really exciting technology that takes all the music, pictures, and video in Media Center and streams it to your TV.

It used to be the case that if you were running Windows Vista, the only device that could act as a Media Center Extender was the Xbox 360. But now the Xbox 360 is about to have company, which is good news for those of you who don't want to buy a game console. In November 2007 a long-awaited flock of new Media Center Extenders from companies such as Linksys, D-Link, and Niveus are scheduled to hit store shelves. Soon it will be even easier to enjoy Internet TV on your real TV.

To learn more about what Extenders are and how to hook one up, read my column From PC to TV, Part 1. If your computer is already stationed near your TV set, you can also hook it up directly. To learn more, see Connect your computer to a TV.

About the author

Michael Stroh is a writer on the Windows team at Microsoft. Before joining the company in 2007, he spent more than a decade writing about science, technology, and medicine for publications that include Popular Science, The Baltimore Sun, ESPN The Magazine, and The Los Angeles Times. His work has been cited in The Best American Science and Nature Writing.

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See also

• Online fun in Windows Media Center—Sports
• Online fun in Windows Media Center—Movies