Watch YouTube videos, Netflix movies and listen to songs from Last.fm in Vista Media Center

Posted on May 22, 2008 at 5:34 am

Windows Vista Media Center is an excellent media server for your home entertainment needs. You can connect it up to your TV and watch movies, videos, stream music, record TV shows onto your computer, link up your Xbox 360 and do lots of other stuff. It’s pretty neat actually.

However, the best part of Windows Media Center are the plugins! Using plugins, you can do all sorts of other cool stuff like convert your dvr-ms format recordings into other formats or access your Outlook email on Windows Media Center. There are a couple of plugins that I would suggest that really are great if you have Vista Media Center at home.

Watch YouTube Videos in Vista Media Center

Yougle Vista is a free pugin that will allow you to watch videos from sites like YouTube, Google Video, DivX Stage 6, DailyMotion, WWITV, listen to music from Shoutcast and view pictures from Flickr and ICanHasCheezburger, all via Vista Media Center.

The only drawback is that the link to Yougle Vista is within the program library, so if you can find a way to get it to “Pictures & Videos” or “TV & movies”, post a comment! This may be fixed in the latest version.

Listen to songs from Last.fm in Vista Media Center

Another really cool plugin for Vista Media Center is the Last.fm MceFM plugin. Once installed, you can stream music and songs from Last.fm to your PC. If you’ve never heard of Last.fm, it’s an online music recommendation service along with a streaming radio service.

In order to use MceFM, you will need to create a free Last.fm account. The plugin isn’t anything special, you just enter the artist name and MceFM will connect to Last.fm, find the music for you and set up a playlist!

One of the nicest features of the plugin is that you can find music similar to songs and artists that already on your PC. Find a track in your music library and then click the More button on your remote (or press Ctrl+D on your keyboard and select More on the context meny), and you can search Last.fm for similar music.

Watch Netflix Movies in Vista Media Center

MyNetflix is another awesome Vista Media center plugin that lets you watch “Watch Now” movies by streaming them to your media center PC. You can also do the following with the MyNetflix plugin:

View your Netflix queue
Browse Netflix movies
View your history/recommendations
Add/remove/move movies from your queue
Browse “Watch now” movies
Play “Watch now” movies

So if you have a Media Center PC at home, then you should definitely check out these three Vista Media Center plugins. If there are other plugins out there that you know of and like, post a comment and let us know! Enjoy!

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» Filed Under Windows Vista