Do you watch a lot of video on your computer? I sure do. I download conference talks and interviews. I especially watch a lot of TV recorded by my Windows Media Center PC by copying the video files to my laptop. Media Center is SO much better than TiVo because you can copy / transfer / save video to other places (like your laptop).

That’s all well and good, except I really miss the ability to skip commercials and pause video via my media center remote control.


That’s been a pain to say the least inside Windows Media Player. Well goodbye days of frustrating commercials and TV via the mouse!

Introducing “Minimalist TV Player” (by me!):


It looks like Windows Media Player and has the same basic features for playing video.

But – you can control it like a Media Center TV to skip commercials and replay an action scene (like the crash shown above at the last Indy 500, just jump back 15 seconds to see the replay)!

You can use the keys PageUp to jump back 15 seconds and PageDown to skip commercials (forward 30 seconds). That’s a good start. But, if you have one of these presentation remotes:


Then you can use it to control the TV Player like a Media Center Remote! Here’s the control mapping:



Now you have the same controls as your Media Center PC on any computer that has Windows Media Player installed! How cool is that?

Download the beta 1 version here:  MinimalistTVPlayer (128 KB)

This beta version is fully functional but will expire in 2009. The supported file types depends somewhat on your system. The program will play any video files that your Windows Media Player can play. This usually includes WMV, MPG, AVI, and possibly DVR-MS files from Windows Media Center and DivX if you have the decoder installed.

One final tip: You can associate the application with your video file types and choose “Open With” to directly launch the program from a file:



Just be careful to not set the TV Player as the default program to load your video with unless that’s what you want.

If you this program, be sure to help promote it by kicking it!

[Update June 5, 2008: I'm working on a much slicker UI which I'll try to get out soon.]