Media Browser normally plays files through Windows Media Center. If you want to use another player for a certain file type, here’s some information to get you going.

Valid media types are:

• BluRay
• HDDVD
• DVD
• AAVI
• MPG
• MKV
• TS (for m2ts and ts files)
• PlayList (for multi-part movies)
• WMW (as of Media Browser 2.2.4 – codename Cronos)

Important note:
This will not have any affect when playing files on extenders

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Setting up an External Player via the Media Browser Configuration Wizard

Open the Media Browser Configuration Wizard (Start –> All Programs –> Media Browser –> Media Browser Configuration Wizard).

• From the top menu of the Configuration Wizard, select “advanced”.
• Select the “external players” tab.
• Select the add button.
• Choose the media type that should open in your external player. Select OK.
• Under section (2) “Configure External Player”, select the “Select Player” button.
• Navigate to the installation directory of your external player and select the .exe file (e.g: For “Windows Media Player”: C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe)

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Command Line Parameters

• In the External Player tab of the Configuration Wizard, under section “ (3) Optional Parameters” select the “Change Parameters” button.
• Next to the “{0}” command, enter any additional command line parameters (they are case sensitive). Separate each command with a space.

For example: Command Line Parameters added for Windows Media Player

"{0}" /fullscreen /close 

This sends the commands to open in fullscreen mode (/fullscreen) and close when finished (/close).

Notes:

• Command Line Parameters are Case Sensitive
• Use a space to separate each Command Line Parameter
• The “{0}” already specified in the Optional Parameters box sends the command to launch the external player

For a list of available command line parameters that external players support, you can visit this page

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What to do if Media Center keeps focus when using an external player?

In certain conditions or when using specific external players, it’s possible that Media Browser keeps the focus while the external player has been launched. Therefor you cannot interact with the external player.

A way to prevent this is to minimize Windows Media Center before the external player is launched. We can do that with a simple script and the cmdow utility.

In this example we're going to launch “Media Player Classic – Home Cinema” as the external player.

• Download the cmdow utility and place it in the folder where the script below will also be created. (e.g. C:\MediaBrowser\Scripts)
• Open notepad and paste the following code:

cmdow @ /HID /MIN
start "MPC-HC" /D "C:\Program Files\MPC HomeCinema" mpc-hc.exe %1 /fullscreen /play /close
cmdow "Windows Media Center" /FS

• Save the file as “extplayer_mpchc.cmd” in C:\MediaBrowser\Scripts. (make sure it doesn’t have the .txt extension)
• Open the configurator like explained above.
• Under section (2) “Configure External Player”, select the “Select Player” button.
• Navigate to C:\MediaBrowser\Scripts and select the extplayer_mpchc.cmd file as the external player.

The script will minimize all windows on the taskbar, launch the external player and maximize Windowos Media Center again after the external player has exited.

You will have to make sure you have some sort of keyboard combo / remote action that will exit the external player if it cannot do this automatically by itself.

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Additional background information

Note: this information is only for reference purposes. Directly editing the xml is not the preferred way of configuring external players.

This feature allows the use of external players for certain types of content instead of using the built in Media Center player.

The following XML replaces the <ExternalPlayers /> section in the file “C:\ProgramData\MediaBrowser\MediaBrowserXml.config”

Example code:

 <ExternalPlayers>
   <ExternalPlayer>
     <MediaType>Avi</MediaType>
     <Command>wmplayer.exe</Command>
     <Args>"{0}"</Args>
   </ExternalPlayer>
   <ExternalPlayer>
     <MediaType>Mkv</MediaType>
     <Command>wmplayer.exe</Command>
     <Args>"{0}"</Args>
   </ExternalPlayer>
 </ExternalPlayers>

The <ExternalPlayer> block is repeated for each type you want to configure.