The Media Center Sandbox

What is the best way to access the Media Center llibrary?

I have written add-in that runs on the background and allows remote control by exposing WCF services. I want to add the ability for the remote application to browse the media library.

The media collection object only seems to be for playlists.

I have tried using the WMP APIs but they are not easy to work with and don't provide an easy way to access album art work as an example.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

The WMP APIs are the only way to access the music library - the Media Center music library is simply a UI on the front of WMP.

To get the album artwork, you need to get the WMCollectionID and wrap it with AlbumArt_{0}_Large.jpg or AlbumArt_{0}_Small.jpg to get the name of the album art file (either full size or thumbnail). Use the path from SourceURL to give you the folder path to the album artwork.

You'll find a complete example of how to do this in the following ZIP file: http://www.digitallivingsolutions.co.uk/downloads/mvpday2007.zip

Cheers,
Andrew

I saw this and remembered seeing your question:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee525804.aspx