2. Archiving Recordings Onto CDs Or DVDs

When there's no longer enough room on the drive on which MCE stores video recordings, you can archive individual programs onto writable CDs or DVDs. But it's somewhat complicated to do this, because it's not listed in the user interface for managing recorded programs by default. Instead, you must push the More button on the remote or right-click the mouse to pop up a menu. Alternatively, you can access this capability by invoking the Create a CD/DVD in the "More Programs" menu entry in the MCE interface.

But in sharp contrast to earlier versions of MCE, MCE 2005 includes DVD burning software as part of this multimedia operating system. In fact, Microsoft licensed the AuthorScript Engine from Sonic for this purpose. Thus, when creating archival copies of TV programs or other video recordings, they can only be burned to DVDs (unless some third-party program is invoked to do the job on a CD).

You can instruct MCE to burn a copy of a recording in advance; all these functions work through the remote control.

You don't necessarily have to use a Media Center PC to play back CD or DVD video recordings, either. Windows Media Player 10 running on Windows XP can handle the job, as can other playback devices that incorporate Windows Media Player 10 (Creative Lab's Zen Portable Media Center Extender is one good example). On Windows XP machines, however, Service Pack 2 (SP2) or the Service Pack 1 Update (Q810243) must be installed and working (both are available through the normal Windows Update service). On Windows XP machines it's also necessary that the DVD device used to play these recordings back use a DVD decoder based on DirectShow technology.