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Many of us have a wired or wireless connection to a PC in our home theaters. What’s better than watching a slideshow of your latest trip abroad or videos of your nephew’s first steps on the big screen? Microsoft hopes you find these things, and many other PC media interactions, to be much easier with the upcoming release of Windows 7 Media Center.

There are plenty of upgrades in this Media Center that will make it a pleasure to browse on any flat panel TV. The start menu has received some slight visual enhancements, so that you are immersed in the improved experience right away. The “Now Playing” tab on the start menu has received an expansion, and the preview video still is much larger than before. This allows not only for easier identification of what’s up next, but also for more text to be displayed beneath the image.

The video library itself now includes thumbnails and titles of each video that is able to be played. This will make distinguishing between home videos and rented or purchased content much easier. Also, there is a “Video Play All” option now available, meaning that you can sit back and enjoy hours of your videos uninterrupted, or quickly navigate through those you want to save for another time.

Onto pictures, those still cousins of video. Windows 7 Media Center has a new feature called “Ambient Slideshow”. This allows for all of your pictures rated three stars or more to be played in a random order with two main views: a zoomed-out view of all of your pictures, or a zoomed-in view of a single picture. The attention to detail in this view makes it great as a background visual for a party, or as a screensaver on your PC.

The Picture Library is now able to be sorted by rating (between one to five stars), and you can share pictures more easily with other connected media devices. One feature that will please many people is the addition of the slideshow option. Now you can access the “Slideshow Creator” and create your personalized slideshow with pictures and music that you select, and save it to show it off at a later time. Picture navigation is much easier in Windows 7 Media Center, as you can turbo-scroll through large picture libraries, like fast-forwarding video at 10x speed, and release the button to stop at a specific point in the library.

The final aspect of Windows 7 Media Center that we’ll cover is the music section. More details now exist for all of you songs, and you can easily navigate through these by going left and right for categories and up and down for details. In the Music Now Playing screen, you’ll notice a more fluid display. Periodically fading in and out between all of your cover art and the particular song’s metadata, this screen is more detailed and easy to understand (and the cover art will look glorious on your HDTV!).

More features in Windows 7 Media Center will be announced as the release date draws nearer, but these are a handful of the ones that will look and sound best in your home theater.

Lauren is a contributing author for the HD Envy blog. HD Envy produces and distributes wall mount TV frame solutions for your home theater. If you’ve ever wanted to spice up your home theater, a wall mount TV frame is the perfect choice. It will be uniquely you, as each wall mount TV frame can be custom made based on your current décor. And because HD Envy uses industry standards to produce each wall mount TV frame, you can install it with ease on nearly any LCD or plasma TV on the market. For a stylish home theater that will make your neighbors drool, check out the wall mount TV frame options at HD Envy.

Tags: Home Theater, HTPC, Intel, Media Center, Windows 7