Enabling Per Section Backgrounds in Media Center

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There are a number of other media center solutions that provide the ability to have a different background for each area of media. Movies, Music and TV all come with various different backgrounds to represent their different content. Now, thanks to bill24 of the Australian Media Center Community, Windows 7 Media Center users can as well. The end result is well worth the work for those interested in the hack though as bill24 mentions this is very much a hack. As such it’s susceptible to interference from other programs or plugins as well as being erased by a Windows Update. The changes are unlikely to cause any major problems though you should always make backups, especially when editing important system files.

For those comfortable with some minor system file manipulation bill24 lays out the steps to use the popular Restorator, which has a free trial, to change a few lines to enable the extra backgrounds. The first thing you’ll need to do is take ownership (Download, Apply, rclick ehres.dll and Take Ownership) of the ehres.dll file in C:\Windows\ehome. Next make two copies of the file one as a backup and another to edit. Once that’s done open up the file in Restorator.

First navigate to the html folder and locate the EXTENSIBILITY.BACKGROUND.XML, make a copy of this file on the desktop and rename it to RECORDEDTV.BACKGROUND.XML. Next open this new file for editing in any text editor (I personally prefer Notepad++) and find the following:

background=”image(Common.Background.png)”

into

background=”image(BD.RECORDEDTV.PNG)”

Now copy that file back into Restorator inside of the html folder and locate the RECORDEDTV.BROWSEPAGE.XML and edit it either inside Restorator or in a text editor. Change the following line:

<backgroundpage url=”COMMON.BACKGROUND.XML”/>

into

<backgroundpage url=”RECORDEDTV.BACKGROUND.XML”/>

This will instruct the program to load a custom image for Recorded TV’s background image. Each of these steps will have to be repeated, replacing the section name for RECOREDEDTV above. Then an image will need to be added for each background referenced in place of the Common.Backgound.png. These images should be dropped into the RCData folder inside Restorator. The following sections are known to be available: VIDEO, RECORDEDTV, PICTURES, MUSIC, RADIO and MOVIES.
Though there is a patch to make this slightly simpler it still requires use of Restorator. You’ll need to apply the patch to an editable version of ehres.dll and then replace the background images named:

BD.VIDEO.png
BD.RECOREDTV.png
BD.PICTURES.png
BD.MUSIC.png
BD.RADIO.png
BD.MOVIES.PNG

restorator png files

Users will simply need to drag and drop the image to replace the new black “replace me” background added by the patch. Then save the new dll file and copy it over the original in C:\Windows\ehome. Though still not particularly for novices this does make the process quite a bit easier. Even if trying your hand at the manual method didn’t work this may give better results when used on that backup file.

A great big thanks to bill24 for coming up with the work to make this possible and Australian Media Center Forums for the community to bring around these great people.

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