Enabling DVD Gallery in Windows Vista

One of the great things about Windows Media Center is that it is more than just a PVR. As the name implies, it's a central location for all of your photos, music, recorded TV as well as DVDs.

With Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, when you ripped a DVD to your hard drive, you could access it through your MCE interface via the 'My Videos' folder. This is great as it allows you to easily create a DVD jukebox. But where do they appear in Vista's Media Center?

Vista has a special section called DVD Gallery in its interface, but it is not available by default. In order to get to it, you have to muck through the Windows registry (down to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\DvdSettings key to be exact) and change the value of the ShowGallery key to Gallery.

It's not the hardest hack in the world, but one wonders why Microsoft would leave something like this out. For more information, check out Microsoft Article ID 930526.