Media Center is working amazingly beyond believability for running an event I am helping with. The event includes about 10 pieces of video, 35 images, and 15 songs. I have two zones: Audio & Video. The video display is detached and full screen on the secondary monitor (projector) while the Audio display is detached and on my first monitor. This helps me notice when I made a mistake and sent something to the audio and not video zone.
But it really is a complete, I'd say nearly perfect solution. Essentially what it means is that the projector is 100% taken care of--as long as the mouse isn't moved to it. I can minimize MC and use the computer normally. I even, at the last minute, created an image and easily added it to the playlist without any concern! I can't think of any other player that provides this kind of power which emphasizes specific control and allows all computer-like features to be hidden. Yes, Power Point could be an alternative but it is not nearly as flexible and I doubt adding a slide with an open presentation would have worked.
Now at a few points, I am pulling live video from a video camera. I'm simply using S-Video to the projector and manually switching the input. Luckily our projector has the ability to disable all junk, too. We have a second projector as backup. I probably could run the camera through Media Center and then I wouldn't even have to switch the input but decided it wasn't worth the hassle. My method works well enough.
I sort of remember when detach display was added. It has got to be one of the most useful features in Media Center. Not only can just specifically move the display to any monitor you want but it also doesn't show any extra stuff when you hover over it.
Gappie very kindly created a modified skin that hid most of the OSD. With a little careful planning, it is never seen. (It is still a black box so I only "pause" or whatever when the video is all or mostly black).
This process has given me a few feature suggestion ideas (new thread).
Addition: queues are as simple as they could be. I was thinking: What would I do without Media Center? Well, I could cover the projector lens between switching content. That would be so stressful and very complicated. Plus, it would be apparent because even when black, the projector is very obvious.
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Topic: Detach It...You'll Love It (Read 903 times)