Back in the day when Microsoft loved consumers and the connected home Microsoft had Windows Media Center, its 10-foot interface designed for a TV with complete video, music and pictures support. As well as still being one of the best media systems for ever created for Windows, Microsoft also had and SDK for developers to come up with their own solutions.

Sadly, Windows Media Center is not part of Windows 10 and most of the resources have disappeared over time, but if you want a blast from the past the Windows Media Center SDK for Windows 7 is now on Github.

Developers came up with a diverse range of apps including movie apps, photo browsers, RSS reader (my first WMC project) and many other addins for Windows Media Center. Former Microsoft Program Manager Charlie Owen who was one of the key people that created the SDK has posted the repository, readers with long memories will remember Charlie’s fantastic support of the Windows Media Center community and the repository also includes some of Charlie’s own collection . The description on Github says:

Preserving a bit of history for the team that created Windows Media Center (the ‘eHome’ team at Microsoft) since the actual installer has gone missing from the original download link as of late.

Many of the ideas from Windows Media Center and its SDK found their way to Windows Phone and the Metro design style.

Now we have the SDK how about the full source of Windows Media Center!

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