MCE Folder Names

[Verran]

So I'm finally getting around to testing out MCE 2005 for a media PC, and so far I'm really liking the functionality with regards to how all the menus look on a TV. The problem is that EVERYTHING this PC will play is played from a different PC over the network. The music area didn't really seem to be bothered by this, but when I add a shared folder of videos to the "My Videos" area, the folder name is //HOSTNAME/Folder_Name/etc, which looks like poop. Can you rename folders inside the actual Media Center app? So instead of seeing "//HOSTNAME/Folder", you just see "Folder"?

 

Also (or really the same question, but more general), can you customize the front menu in the Media Center app? Like instead of My Videos, My Music, My Pictures, etc, can you have TV Shows, Movies, Comedy, Albums, etc. Basically, is there a way to configure the Media Center menus like you change the Start Menu directories in regular Windows?

[bigred]

right click in a blank area. you'll get a drop down menu. one of the options is add music or add movies. you can either choose from network, or this PC (if you've got drives mapped this will be easier). from there it'll walk you thru it.

[Verran]

right click in a blank area. you'll get a drop down menu. one of the options is add music or add movies. you can either choose from network, or this PC (if you've got drives mapped this will be easier). from there it'll walk you thru it.

Yeah I got a few mapped drives added, but I'm wondering if there's a way to change the visible name of the folder. I just think that a folder with a visible name of //HOSTNAME/musicvideos looks pretty crappy.

[bigred]

not that I know of. that's why mapping them and having a share name of "movies" or "music" works well

[waterlou]

not that I know of. that's why mapping them and having a share name of "movies" or "music" works well

 

Map the path to a drive letter ... it'll then show up the way you are requesting.

 

Also, the front-end menu can be edited. I suggest you take a look at "thegreenbutton" forum. Good resource there.

 

Jerome

[Verran]

Map the path to a drive letter ... it'll then show up the way you are requesting.

 

Also, the front-end menu can be edited. I suggest you take a look at "thegreenbutton" forum. Good resource there.

 

Jerome

Can you elaborate on this a bit more please?

 

I have my videos folder mapped to the Z: drive, but when I add it to the videos area of MCE, it still shows the folder name as //HOSTNAME/Folder_Name. I've found no way to change that.

 

Also, I have checked at thegreenbutton and there seems to be a good bit of info there. I'm curious if you have found a specific thread or article on editting the front-end menu because that's exactly what I'm looking for. If you have a link to a thread or maybe a software package name to google for, that'd be awesome. Thanks.

[Verran]

I just thought I'd put my update here. I did end up getting this to work. It turns out I wasn't mapping my drives properly. I have all my media in folders like [E:\Music], [E:\MusicVideos], [E:\Comedy], etc. And normally I just share out the music folder as one, the music videos folder as another, and so on. Well doing this was still giving me the less-than-presentable folder names that I talked about. But if I share out the directory above the MusicVideos folder, then it works.

 

So basically, instead of mapping [E:\MusicVideos], I mapped the directory above it, which was [E:\]. By doing this, I'm not actually including the whole mapped drive, but just a sub-directory. When I do that, the folder display name in MCE is the same as the actual folder name. So I can just change the folder names to whatever I want them to display as.

 

Anyways, I hope that makes sense. I just thought I'd share my solution in case anyone else has this problem.