Media Center hangs in 'Movies - movie library'

There is an ID # on every DVD. This is used to download the metadata from the web. In the case of Rips or AVI's, etc. this ID is not present, so you have to download the info from a site like the one Orbital Shark posted. This you include in the folder for the movie and it is stored permanently.

gmemore: yes, thank you, helpful indeed :)

copernicus: i was wondering the same thing. Filename is all it displays currently. How to do this anyone? Per the g/f's request actually. I am not in any way a big MC or WMP player guy until i've got my hands on 7. So any "obvious stuff" feel free That goes for anyone :)

well doh! i missed that completely

also need a smiley with a hammer hitting one's head lol :P


see what i mean by the need to state the obvious? lmao

thanks again orbital. If you wouldnt mind when you get around to the tutorial, do some exploration/research on having to setup somekind of filter system, be it the star rating/unrated system or by actual movie/audio parental rating. I have done a little fooling around with my movies. It seems a bit more tedious to get setup and going, but it may be the only answer to a parental style setup filter. Situation is i have "G" content, then say PG-PG17 group, then R and anthing above. I have a linksys extender I've been playing with and it seems tho i may have some hope. Atleast in a way to set the extender to not play anthing unrated or above a set parental tag unless the use of the parental code. As far as the pc or WMP way of viewing/accessing things, if possible, i wouldnt even want it to -ls any dir or file that doesnt meet the filter in place on that local pc.

many thanks again tho... you have given my sailboat a big puff of wind

Yeah, I guess it would only be obvious if you had been doing it awhile .

Like I said, all commercial discs have an ID embedded in them. This is how Media Center knows you have "T2" and not "T2 Extreme DVD" in your dvd rom.
In the "old days" when you copied a CD, say with Roxio, you could retrieve the track info off the web automatically from the copy as well as the original. The same would be true for WMP, because the Copy was a true Copy. But if you had all of the tracks of a particular CD stored as mp3's (or as Audio Files), gathered all of them together in the same order as the CD, titled them exactly the same as the CD and burned a disc, that ID# would be missing = no info from the web

If you could do the same with a DVD, a true 1:1 copy like a CD then you could probably do the same thing. But you must alter a movie in some form or fashion to be able to play it again, even if you make a DVD copy. Therefore the unique ID is missing so whatever you are playing it on doesn't "know" it is the same disc.

This is why some downloads in WMP do not display cover art. It is also why when you download music that was on a particular album (did I just say "album"???, I'm dating myself here) it will show up as 3 or 4 different albums. You have to manually enter the information to replicate a particular collection of tracks or files.

DVDXML and the sights Orbital Shark suggested are a collection of uploaded metadata for movies from people, kinda like p2p for metadata, just on a website. If you are handy creating xml files you could create your own reviews or synosis' and cover art in one file. If you don't have that,(and I don't) you can at least put some cover art in you movie folder.
You can also rename the file without_all_of_the extra info so that it displays correctly on your MC screen...

take ya time orbital... i'm in no hurry, still playing around with the thing as we speak. I'm like a blind man touring the taj mahal