Use Windows Media Center to Play YouTube Videos
Windows Media Center lovers can now enjoy their favorite Youtube videos on their PC. An installation of a third party add-on called MacroTube can serve the purpose of delivering Youtube videos to Windows Media Center efficiently. Macrotube allows viewing of videos from Youtube, Daily Motion and SoapBox within media center without having to open any browser.
MacroTube integrates into the WMC menu system and provides an interface that is idebtical to the WMC. So the art of using it is no alien to a Windows user. After the intallation, the user need to open his media center and scroll to find the MacroTube service. On clicking it, the user will be able to browse the service of choice. Besides the default services, the user can insert more video services such as Twit, Cranky Geeks, HD Nations, Lab Rats, MSDN Channel 9, Revesion 3, TED talks and many more by just clicking on the manage video services link.
A search bar at the top provides Google search suggestions that also allows searching of videos by ratings, views and relevance. An on-screen keyboard can also be activated. The search provides a series of relevant video thumbnails and clicking on any particular one starts playing that video inside the media center in full screen.
There are a few number of shortcomings in the MacroTube service. Firstly, there is no way to separate the HD Youtube videos from the non-HD ones which becomes grainy on big screens. Secondly, a Favourites option is missing which prevents the keeping of most-watched videos close at hand. Again, there is no provision of logging into existing Youtube account where all the videos are already stored. It has also been seen that video playing take quite some time to start.
It hasn’t been long that Macrotube has been released, so there are ample chances for improvement in the coming future. However, the new beta is definitely worth giving a try.