Media Center Studio – Take control of your GUI

The Media Center user interface has changed a fair bit since its original introduction, but one area it’s never been particularly strong in is that of user interface customisation.

Fortunately -- as is usually the case -- where Microsoft keep things locked down there are those who like to open it back up again, and it’s with that in mind we are taking a look at Media Center Studio.

Media Center Studio was created by ‘Advent’ from the Australian Media Center Community and allows users to edit both the general appearance and perhaps more importantly the contents of the main menu.

Media Center Studio uses a ribbon interface for its main elements, with 3 tabs; Home, Themes and Start Menu with editing tool, along with another pair below them outside for swapping between editing Themes and the Start Menu.
Really there could be some context sensitivity here as the tools on the ribbons are only relevant to their corresponding mode, but for a free application we aren’t going to get picky.

Themes

Themes allow you to customise the general appearance of Media Center, from basic elements such as colours and fonts to complete overhauls of all the images that make up the user interface.

These themes can be saved and exported to share with others, like the ‘Streaming Light‘ theme below; perfect for the less artistically gifted users such as myself.

A quick word of advice; if you want to revert back to the default Media Center theme and have applied a custom one simply create a new theme in Media Center Studio and apply it, this will undo any changes made.

Start Menu Customisation

For me this is the real killer feature for Media Center Studio.

As standard Media Center includes a lot of options on the Start Menu that the majority of people rarely, if ever, use -- the entire Movies for example is rendered pointless when MyMovies is installed - while other features can sit unused cluttering up strips.

Media Center Studio gives you the ability to remove (or at least hide from the default items) both individual options and entire menu strips, as well as add items to existing strips, re-order strips and items, set default items, and in Windows 7 create entirely new strips to populate with applications.

This can help create a much cleaner and more personalised Start Menu for your Media Center, particularly when combined with a custom theme.

The only real downside in this area is there isn’t a great deal of documentation included with the application at present, and the interface can be a little unintuitive at first.
But fear not, for thanks to the combined magic of video capture cards and YouTube we have a video going over the basics…

Conclusion

Media Center Studio isn’t perfect, it’s a little rough around the edges with some interface quirks and the occasional crash, but it’s a great tool for streamlining and personalising Media Center.
Even as is I’d heartily recommend it for the enthusiast user.