Watch TV Recorded with Media Center When You're on the Go
Published: February 7, 2005
By Tony Northrup
I love TV. If I have the choice, I always choose to watch TV over reading a book or listening to music. Until recently, however, I didn't have a choice when I was on the go. For example, I took a five-hour flight from Boston to Florida last year, and all I had to entertain myself with during the long trip was the music on my portable audio player. Music was better than nothing, but the trip would have seemed much quicker if I had been catching up on The Simpsons or Malcolm in the Middle.
I'm going back to Key West soon (these Boston winters are tough for a Texas boy), but this time I will have my TV shows. You can too and not just on airplanes. One of my favorites is to record MSNBC News Live each night, synch up my player in the morning, and catch up on the news on my way to work.
Here are other places where you'll enjoy viewing your recorded shows:
| • | In hotel rooms. Traveling doesn't mean you have to watch live TV. Bring your recorded shows with you, and watch them on the television in your room. |
| • | In the back seat of your car, as shown in Figure 1. Your kids can watch their favorite TV shows instead of watching the same DVD over and over again. (You might even get them to watch something educational). If you have screens built into your headrests, you can connect a Portable Media Center to your car's auxiliary input or burn TV shows to a DVD and play them back in your car's DVD player. If your kids are older, record music videos. The backseat passengers can watch the videos, while the front-seat passengers listen to the music. 
Figure 1: You can watch shows in your car using a Portable Media Center.
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| • | On the train to work. You can hold Portable Media Centers in your hand and watch television anywhere—even while standing on a train. Add noise-canceling headphones to block out the background noise. |
| • | In or around your home. You don't have to have a TV in every room to watch TV in any room. Watch a recorded cooking show in your kitchen, while you follow along (you can even pause when you need to, since you probably don't have assistants chopping your ingredients for you). In the summer, take your recorded TV shows out to the deck or pool. |
There are several different ways you can carry your shows with you:
| • | Get a Media Center notebook PC. Like any Media Center PC, these notebooks can record shows for later playback. Because they're notebooks, you can take it with you when you travel and even control it from a remote. |
| • | Synchronize recorded TV shows from a Media Center PC to a Portable Media Center. You can then watch the shows on the Portable Media Center's built-in screen or connect it to a television, as Barb Bowman described. An infrared remote (an optional accessory for my Portable Media Center) lets me rewind and fast forward from bed. |
| • | Copy recorded TV shows from your Media Center PC to your notebook, and watch the shows with Windows Media Player 10. |
| • | Burn recorded TV shows to a DVD, and watch them on a DVD player. How to record shows to DVD is one of the most common questions I see in the newsgroups. The feature was not built into Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004, but is now available in Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. |
How to Pick Which Shows are Synchronized to a Portable Media Center
If you have a Media Center PC and a Portable Media Center, taking recorded TV shows is literally as simple as connecting a cable. Once connected, the Media Center will automatically copy shows recorded in the last week to your Portable Media Center.
If you have a lot of music, pictures, and shows that you want to take with you, your Portable Media Center might not have room to copy every show you've recorded. Make sure you have the shows that are most important to you by adding them to the top of your synchronization list:
1. | Connect your Portable Media Center to your Media Center computer, and in Media Center, press the START button on your remote. |
2. | Scroll to More Programs, and then press OK on your remote. |
3. | Scroll to Sync To Device, and then press OK on your remote. |
4. | In the Sync Progress dialog box, select Edit Lists, and then press OK on your remote. |
5. | On the Manage List page, scroll left and select Add More. Press OK on your remote. |
6. | On the Add More page, select Recorded TV, and then press OK on your remote. |
7. | On the Add More Recorded TV page, select the shows you want to synchronize with the highest priority (as shown in Figure 2), and press OK to add a check mark next to each show. 
Figure 2: Add your most important shows to your synchronization list to ensure they are copied to your Portable Media Center.
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8. | Select Save, and then press OK on your remote. |
9. | On the Manage List page (as shown in Figure 3), use your remote to prioritize your lists. Synchronization will start with the items at the top of the list, and continue down the list until your Portable Media Center is full. Place the shows that are most important to you at the top of the list. 
Figure 3: Re-order your synchronization list to prioritize your music, pictures, and videos.
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10. | Select Start Sync, and then click OK on your remote. |
Media Center will tell you when your shows have been synchronized. Depending on how long it has been since you synchronized your shows, it might take several hours. I like to start synchronization before I go to bed, so that it's ready for me in the morning.
How to Fit More Recorded TV on Your Portable Media Center
Media Center PCs always convert recorded TV shows into smaller files, a process known as transcoding. By default, the quality of these files is very high, which means each file takes up a great deal of space on your Portable Media Center. I'm willing to tolerate a slightly blurry picture in order to have more shows at my fingertips, so I've adjusted the quality level to use smaller file sizes. To adjust the quality setting, follow these steps:
1. | Connect your Portable Media Center to your Media Center computer. |
2. | Start Windows Media Player on your Windows Media PC by using the mouse to click the Start button, point to All Programs, and then click Windows Media Player. |
3. | Click the Library tab. In the left pane, right-click your Portable Media Center, and then click Properties. |
4. | In the Properties dialog box, click the Quality tab. |
5. | In the Video/TV Quality Level area, click Select Quality Level. Adjust the slider to your desired setting. I'm not happy with the quality of the smallest size, but the second-smallest size works well. 
Figure 4: Carry more shows with you by reducing the quality level.
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6. | Click OK. |
The new quality settings will take effect only when new files are converted. If TV shows have already been converted at a different quality setting, they will not be automatically re-converted with the new settings.
How to Watch Recorded Shows on a Different Computer
If you have a home network, you can watch recorded shows on a different computer, such as the notebook you use when you travel. Follow these steps:
1. | On the computer you want to use to watch recorded shows, visit Microsoft Update and verify that your computer has Windows XP Service Pack 2 installed. |
2. | On the Media Center computer, share your Recorded Television folder.
By default, the folder is located at C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\Recorded TV\. |
3. | On the destination computer, connect to the shared folder. |
4. | If you want to watch shows when disconnected from your network (for example, when you're traveling), copy the .DVR-MS files to your My Videos folder.
You'll need about one gigabyte of free disk space for each half-hour of recorded television. (The actual file size will depend upon the recording quality you select in Media Center.) |
If you don't have enough disk space, consider burning the shows to a writeable DVD (described later in this article). If you want to watch shows when you're connected to the network, there's no need to copy the files, because you can run them directly from the shared folder.
How to Burn Recorded Shows to a DVD
If your Media Center PC has a DVD burner, you might want to burn recorded shows to DVD so you can watch them on a portable DVD player or in your car's backseat DVD player. You couldn't do this with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004, but you can with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. To create a DVD with your shows, follow these steps:
1. | Insert a writeable DVD disc into your computer's DVD burner drive and select Create CD/DVD from the pop-up that appears in the upper right corner of the screen. The pop-up goes away after a few seconds so if you miss it scroll to More Programs on the Start page and select OK. |
2. | On the Disk Format page, select Video DVD, and then press OK on your remote. Press OK again. |
3. | On the Name This DVD page, assign a name (which isn't a necessity), and then press OK on your remote. |
4. | On the Select Media page, select either Recorded TV or Videos, and then press OK on your remote. |
5. | On the next page, select the TV shows or videos you want to add to the DVD by highlighting them and pressing OK on your remote. When you have added all the shows you want, select View DVD, and then press OK on your remote. |
6. | On the View DVD page, select Create DVD, and press OK on your remote. |
7. | In the Initiating Copy dialog box, select Yes and then press OK on your remote. |
8. | The Creation Progress dialog box opens while Media Center prepares the shows to be copied to the CD. If you choose to press OK, Media Center will notify you when the DVD has been created. |
9. | After Media Center finishes the DVD, the Completing Disk Creation dialog box opens. Select No, and then press OK on your remote. |
You can now put the DVD into any standard DVD player. When the DVD starts, a Media Center menu opens and allows you to choose which of the recorded TV shows to play.
