I never really cared so much about customizing my Vista MCE menus - until I found a utility that allowed me to do just that.

Some background:

I don’t listen to music, I have no music and, therefore, my HTPCs have no need for music playback.  In fact, I’d find it an incredible waste to require so much equipment to play back mp3s or whatever.  That’s not to say that I don’t understand audiophiles or music lovers in general.  Most home theater equipment was created with music playback in mind, so I’m grateful.

Anyway, considering I don’t need the music capabilities in Media Center, it only makes sense to remove it - or at least hide it.  There’s never really been an easy way of doing that without editing a bunch of XML files, unregistering MCE applications, etc. ad nauseum.  I tried an older application from XPMediaCentre.com.au called MCE Customizer, and while it did some things well, it failed at editing menus for me.

Now, there is a drag-and-drop interfaced application that allows us to hide, move and even delete some menus.  You can also easily create more than two (previous limit for available offerings) custom menus, although you can still only see up to two custom menus in VMC.  This utility is a successor to MCE Customizer and is called MC Menu Mender.  I found a thread at TheGreenButton.com, but the origination is at XPMediaCentre.com.au.

I’ve since tested this out on two of my VMC boxes and it works very well.  I was able to disable the entire Music strip, as well as disable some unused objects within several strips.  It also allowed me to group a few objects into more convenient strips so that I could limit my scrolling for similar object links (i.e. placing the MyMovies Movie Collection object in Pictures + Videos).  I also like the fact that the utility allows you to rename any item available (I didn’t like TV + Movies, so I renamed it to TV + DVD and renamed Pictures + Videos to Movies + Pictures).  I realize most all of this is glam and preference, but it does add to the HTPC experience, in my opinion.

I did find a bug or two that caused VMC to crash upon saving and starting up.  VMC doesn’t like it when objects of static strips are moved to other strips.  I found this out when trying to move “play dvd” from TV + Movies to Pictures + Videos.  If I recall, there was a fix available in the thread at XPMediaCentre.com.au, but it involved some XML hacking that I’m not real interested in doing.  Could I do it?  Sure…no problem.  It’s just that I’m really not that inconvenienced.  The pay isn’t worth the work, if you will.

So, if you’re jonesing for some menu customization with Vista Media Center, head on over and grab the utility.  It’s a very nice addition to my collection.

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 10:07 am and is filed under HTPC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.