| Note: Some movies or TV shows are marked as protected when recorded and you may not be able to add them to a CD or DVD, or copy them to another computer. The terms of the content protection are determined by the content owner, broadcaster, or originator. |
After you record TV shows with Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, you can copy the shows to another computer just like any other file. If you have a laptop computer in addition to your Media Center PC, you can copy shows to your laptop and watch them when you're away from home using Windows Media Player (version 10 or later).
 Tip: If you're thinking about getting a new laptop, why not make it a Media Center laptop so that you can enjoy all the benefits of Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 wherever you go? |
There are two ways to watch recorded TV on your laptop:
- Burn shows to a DVD. This is the easiest way to watch recorded TV on another computer. In order to burn TV shows to a DVD, you need to have a DVD-burning drive in your Media Center PC, a DVD drive in your laptop, and a writeable DVD.
- Copy shows to your laptop's hard disk. In order to copy shows from your Media Center PC to your laptop, you need a home network and several gigabytes (GB) worth of free space on your laptop (every 30 minutes of recorded TV consumes about 1 GB). Setting up your computers to share recorded TV shows is a more advanced procedure and requires a little patience the first time you do it, but after the initial configuration, it's easy to copy shows.
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Share the folder containing your shows on your home network. To share your Recorded TV folder:
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Log on to your Media Center PC with an administrator user account.
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If necessary, close Media Center.
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Open My Computer. Navigate to your Recorded TV folder, which is located in the C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Shared Documents\ folder by default.
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Right-click your Recorded TV folder, and then click Sharing and Security.
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In the Recorded TV Properties dialog box, click If you understand the security risks but want to share files without running the wizard, click here. If you don't see this prompt, skip to step g.
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In the Enable File Sharing dialog box, click Just enable file sharing, and then click OK.
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In the Recorded TV Properties dialog box, select the Share this folder on the network check box. In the Share name box, type Recorded TV. Click OK.
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Before you can connect to your newly shared folder, you must determine the name of your Media Center PC.
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Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
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In the System Properties dialog box, click the Computer Name tab. Make note of the Full computer name shown.
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On the computer you want to copy recorded shows onto (in this case, your laptop), connect to the shared Recorded TV folder across your network:
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Open My Computer.
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Click the Tools menu, and then click Map Network Drive.
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In Folder, type \\computer_name\Recorded TV. For computer_name, use the full computer name you made note of in step 2b. Click Finish. A new window opens showing your recorded TV shows.
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Copy your recorded TV shows across your network from your Media Center PC to your laptop, just like you would copy any other file. The simplest way to copy the shows is to drag-and-drop them to your My Videos folder. Your recorded TV shows have file names in the format ShowName_Station_Date_Month_Year_Hour_Minute_Second.dvr-ms.
After copying your recorded TV shows, double-click on one of the files to play the show in Windows Media Player. To view the show in full screen mode, click the View menu, and then click Full Screen. Don't forget to pack your headphones!
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