Playing ripped DVDs in Vista Media Center

Now I can rip a DVD to a VIDEO_TS folder and watch it from within Vista Media Center. Nice.

Really short instructions for the impatient (but I strongly suggest reading the complete instructions):

Open Registry Editor (Start, Run, REGEDIT) and navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\DvdSettings

Double-click the key ShowGallery and change the value from “Play” to “Gallery”.

Windows Media Center five years old

Reading Charlie Owen's blog I stumbled upon this post on Media Center's fifth birthday which was quite interesting.

Back from vacation

Ok, back from two weeks on Sardinia. Nice place.

As for my HTPC I have two itches at the moment:

1. I can't get Vista Media Center to find all my channels
2. I noticed that I didn't get proper surround sound over my toslink connection to my sound system. When I let ffdshow audio handle Dolby Digital decoding it seems to work. But then I can't get normal audio to work properly. Also, it would be nice to have audio through HDMI and optical digital out simultaneously. I will expand on these problems in a later post and see what (if any) workarounds I have found. All pointers are welcome.