Windows 8 Bible

Things You Can Do Without TV

You can do many things in Media Center that don’t require a TV tuner card or TV. You can do these things with Media Center showing full screen or in a smaller window on the desktop.

Playing music in Media Center

The Music portion of Media Center gets albums and songs from Windows Media Player. You can also listen to online radio stations from Media Center. Choose Music from the home page. Options that appear across the horizontal row are summarized here:

• Music Library: Lets you choose songs from Windows Media Player categories and playlists to play. You can create a queue of songs to play and more.
• Play Favorites: Plays songs in your Media Player media library based on their ratings.
• Radio: Lets you locate and play music from radio stations if your PC includes an FM radio tuner.
• Search: Helps you find songs in your media library.

Note

If there is no music in your media library yet, you’ll be prompted to add some. You can choose to put songs in your media library. If you don’t have a media library, you can learn to create one in Chapter 24, “Making Music with Media Player.”

While music is playing, you’ll see album and song information, as well as control buttons. Figure 26.11 shows an example of a music selection playing. You can use the control buttons to view or change the queue (playlist), watch a music visualization, play a photo slide show with the music, and so forth. Use the playback controls to control volume, pause, stop, skip songs, ...