TechMicrosoftMSN Video Player Now Part of Windows Media Center

MSN Video Player Now Part of Windows Media Center

By Andrew Edney

May 19, 2010

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Today the MSN Video Player arrived as part of Windows Media Center – well, in the UK at least.

If you launch Windows Media Center, you may now see the MSN Video Player icon showing up on the TV strip.

To install it, just click on the icon and follow the instructions.

It’s a very small download so it shouldn’t talk long at all.

You will need to have Silverlight 4 installed, which you can get from http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight

When you go into the Guide now you will see all the available content, just click on something to see what you can view of it:

There will also be a Silverlight update for Internet TV, again this only takes a few seconds.

And then the chosen content will play.

There is a really good mixture of programming to watch as a starting point and hopefully this will get better as time goes on, so for now why not take a look.

Andrew Edney https://moviesgamesandtechcom.wpcomstaging.com

I am the owner and editor of this site. I have been interested in gadgets and tech since I was a little kid. I have also written a number of books on various tech subjects. I also blog for The Huffington Post and for FHM. And I am honoured to be a Microsoft MVP since January 2008 - again this year as an Xbox MVP.

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33 COMMENTS

Peter Ferdinand May 21, 2010 At 10:02 am

MSN Video Player suddenly appeared on my Medi Center for no good reason. This is the worst spam I have ever experienced.

It is not working and I cannot remove it.

I simply do not want it!!!!!

Please tell me how to remove it???????
- Andrew Edney May 21, 2010 At 11:02 am
  
  Peter
  
  I dont think you can remove it as it is part of Media Center.
  
  Im not sure why you think its spam though?
  
  Its a streaming capability that you either use or you dont use – thats not spam.
  
  Andrew
welchwerks May 22, 2010 At 12:02 am

If yo must remove it try this

i love this little program

http://www.adventmediacenter.com/
John Maguire May 22, 2010 At 12:23 pm

Unfortunately for me it doesn't work on my main Media Center PC although it does work fine on another computer. I just get the error message that 'The Video Gallery is not available, try again later…' I've uninstalled and reinstalled the MSN Video Plugin, I can watch MSN videos directly in IE8 though.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.
- Andrew Edney May 23, 2010 At 11:44 am
  
  John
  
  I found this at first the other night myself – when I wrote the article I could install it but had no content, the next day the content was there.
  
  is it there now?
  
  and did you do the 2 Silverlight updates?
  
  Andrew
Name (required) Jun 1, 2010 At 7:38 pm

I get this error too:

The Video Gallery is not available, try again later
Stephane Baronnet Jun 6, 2010 At 4:16 am

It works perfectly. Great new feature. Very simple to install. Apparently not for everyone…
Peter Colmer, Kent Mar 7, 2011 At 7:04 pm

March 2011. Just treated my good lady to a pretty new Lenovo A310 with Windows 7 Home premium. Media centre is there but MSN Video player isn’t! Anyone know how I can get it?
- Andrew Edney Mar 7, 2011 At 7:17 pm
  
  Have you done all the updates? It should be included with one of those.
Peter Colmer, Kent Mar 7, 2011 At 7:50 pm

Gosh! What a lightning reply and after this site has been dormant for a year! That’s impressive! Thanks, Andrew.I have not been presented with any updates of Media Centre yet but I have only had it for 3 days and have been transferring old files etc. Do you know how I can prompt such an update? Many thanks
P
- Andrew Edney Mar 7, 2011 At 7:57 pm
  
  the post may be old but the site isnt dormant 🙂
  
  run all the Windows Updates, and you should start to get Media Center updates as well.
  
  Try going to Settings, General, Automatic Download Options and click Download Now.
Peter Colmer, Kent Mar 7, 2011 At 8:14 pm

Brilliant! Thanks very much indeed. I shall report back!
Again….thank you…from both of us!
- Andrew Edney Mar 8, 2011 At 10:11 am
  
  A pleasure – happy to help 🙂
  - Peter Colmer, Kent Mar 8, 2011 At 6:43 pm
    
    Hi Andrew.
    Well, I did say I would report back and here I am flushed with pride having installed every known update under the sun including SP1 which just went through. Sadly MSN video player is still missing and the Windows Live scan now shows there are no updates available.Any thoughts?
    Thanks
    Peter
    - Andrew Edney Mar 8, 2011 At 7:00 pm
      
      Hi Peter
      
      I have just performed a clean install of Windows on a test box and I cant get it to appear now either!
      
      I’ll do some digging around and see what I can come up with.
      
      Maybe they have removed it?
      - Andrew Edney Mar 8, 2011 At 7:05 pm
        
        Right – I cant get a seperate menu item to appear but if you click on Recorded TV all the channels and players are shown there.
Peter Colmer, Kent Mar 8, 2011 At 7:17 pm

Hi again ! This is very odd. I bought this model for the wife on the recommendation of my father-in law who bought his just a few days before. This player appeared at some stage on his during the normal updating procedure and remains there and working fine. A week later we do the same installation 200 yards away in our place with an identical machine and….nowt! Weird! On recorded TV I just get the ” no TV recorded” message. Don’t you just LOVE computers! Thanks for your instant help, by the way. I hope we can get this thing in as it’s a really good addition! P
- Andrew Edney Mar 8, 2011 At 7:24 pm
  
  Very odd!
  
  The only other things I did was to rerun the setup wizard choosing Custom and selecting the Enhanced Playback. I also installed the Play “something” option under the General settings.
  
  Try those…..
  - Peter Colmer, Kent Mar 11, 2011 At 5:37 pm
    
    Hi Andrew. I’ve been pre-occupied with family problems and so this little project is on the back burner, but just a quick question which may sound very basic ( and is, I am sure) When you say to go to TASKS/General/Automatic downloads etc, are you referring to System 7 because I cannot find those commands. Thanks
    P
    - Andrew Edney Mar 11, 2011 At 5:39 pm
      
      Hi Peter
      
      From within Media Center 🙂
      - Peter Colmer Mar 12, 2011 At 4:02 pm
        
        Andrew, despite all your efforts I am a miserable failure and my wife thinks I’m incompetent! if you ever have any further ideas on the subject, I am all ears! The MSN video available shows are showing on the guide, right at the end, but clicking them elicits no response. The MSN video icon is still not on the TV strip no matter what I do. Hopeless of Kent!
        
        Andrew Edney Mar 12, 2011 At 4:46 pm
        
        hi Peter
        
        I cant play them either on this new machine! I’m not sure what to suggest so I will bring it up on next week Digital Lifestyle Show podcast I co-present.
        
        I think it may be an issue with MS, rather than us!
        
        Andrew Edney Mar 12, 2011 At 11:42 pm
        
        Hi Peter
        
        I asked my good friend Garry Whittaker to take a look, and he came back with:
        
        “Looks like ms may have broken this. I cant get it to work on a new build either.”
        
        We are both still looking into it……
        
        Peter Colmer, Kent Mar 14, 2011 At 7:24 pm
        
        Andrew, I am truly grateful. This is beyond the call of duty! I’m sort of happy it’s not me, but it will be sadi f it has been removed because it seems to be an excellent addition. It is still working fine on the first computer….not sure what that is telling us, but it can’t be negative , can it?
        Cheers
        P
        
        Andrew Edney Mar 14, 2011 At 8:15 pm
        
        We are still on the case 🙂 It’s very odd!
Peter Colmer, Kent Mar 8, 2011 At 7:35 pm

Thanks very much, Andrew. I will have another go tomorrow as I have to go out in a few minutes. I really appreciate your help.
P
Richard Cawley tyrone Mar 30, 2011 At 3:44 am

I am having same problem cant get msn on main pc but have it on my laptop (Windows 7 Ultimate) installed on laptop months before i had it installed on pc.
I have tried everything,updating inside WMC and through CMD,but no joy
Warby Apr 11, 2011 At 12:51 pm

Hi, just thought I’d let people know, I had a problem in that, although the player appeared in the guide, it didn’t have the install tile so I couldn’t use it. It was working perfectly on another computer in the house and I was perplexed, all the settings were the same!
Anyway, after scouring the internet for days trying to find a fix that worked, I eventually did…
So, here’s what I did:
1: Open control panel and go to the Network and Sharing centre (Center because Americans cant spell)
2: Change adaptor settings
3: Go to the properties of your connection (In my case a network card)
4:Under the networking tab find the line which says ‘Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and double click on it
5:Near the bottom, where it says ‘Obtain DNS server address automatically’ and ‘ Use the following DNS server addresses’, select the latter
6:For the preferred DNS server use 8.8.8.8
7:For the alternate DNS server use 8.8.4.4
(These are Google’s public DNS servers)
8:Make sure you save your changes, close everything and then open command prompt (under accessories in the start menu)
9:type in ‘ipconfig /flushdns’ (no quote marks)hit enter
10:once finished, type ‘cd \’ (enter) followed by ‘cd c:\Windows\ehome’ (enter) and finally ‘start /wait mcupdate –uf’ (enter)
11: That’s it! You may need to restart your computer, but when you open up WMC the tiles for installation should appear

I found this here: http://digitalmediaphile.com/index.php/2011/01/31/how-to-fix-missing-netflix-and-internet-tv-on-wmc/

and have personally tested this using the DNS server TCP/IPs that I provided in the guide

This is the ONLY thing that worked for me and believe me, I tried every tiny little thing I found on any site to get it to work!

I hope this helps, sorry for the such long post
- Andrew Edney Apr 11, 2011 At 2:33 pm
  
  thanks Warby – that’s great!
mcmlxxiii Jun 21, 2011 At 10:36 am

when i try to use my msn video player in the media centre it wont work keeps saying media centre has stopped working but yet everything else works on the media centre as far as i can see anyone help me with this issue windows media centre with windows 7 home premium is what i’ve got.
Oddly, the search button does the same thing, a second click (after application restart) then closes themedia center completely, HELP PLEASE! this is a brand new laptop windows home premium 64 bit with sp1 installed.
- Andrew Edney Jun 21, 2011 At 10:02 pm
  
  Looks like this is a problem a few people are having.
  
  Check out :
  
  http://experts.windows.com/frms/windows_entertainment_and_connected_home/f/114/t/101313.aspx
  
  Microsoft are aware of the problem and are working on a fix…
  
  Andrew
Stephen Dick Aug 29, 2011 At 1:33 am

Anyone still having problems with ‘The Video Gallery is not available, try again later’, i’ve spent ages trying to work out how to get it working, the answer was so simple – and i’ve been tring to sort it out for ages – just make sure that all the language settings are set to UK, I had one setting still on US english, as soon as I changed this setting all the videos started up straight away, hope this helps!