I have a new HP TouchSmart 300, which I use only for music playing, using the Media Center in Windows 7.

Works perfect, the interface and touch is really great.

 Only one minor issue so far:

The pc is set to go to sleep automatically after 10 minutes of inactivity. This works fine when in Windows desktop, in Media Center menu strip and in Media Center Music view.

But after having played an album, showing the Now Playing screen, the pc will not go to sleep automatically. This is a very annoying, as this is exactly the case where the sleep function would be most appreciated (for me, anyway).

I suppose the cause of the problem is the activity going on in the Now Playing screen, where the album art and info every minute or so change position from one side of the screen to the other, even after the music has stopped. I suspect the system will never be seen as idle in this case.

Does anyone know how to turn this off? I do not need this movement, as well as I don't need the waterfall or visualisation or whatever, only a steady presentation of what is actually being played.

Any hints or ideas for solution will be much appreciated, thanks.

 I ran across this recently and find it equally as annoying.

Have you tried installing the MST tool from slicksolutions (Win7 version is at version 09098 at the moment).

Fixes any sleep issues I ever have -  gives you lots of options (including an adjustable sleep after no user activity setting).

http://slicksolutions.eu/cgi-bin/download.cgi?download=mst09098.exe

Hello-

My name is Matt and I was the developer on the Music Now Playing feature in Windows 7 and we actually made a conscious decision to inhibit the screen saver while the experience is running so that the screen saver wouldn't pop up over the full screen experience. We felt that most people would prefer this while they play music full screen and want the eye candy / info shown during parties, for example, so we worked to come up with designs that wouldn't cause image retention on plasma displays so that we wouldn't require a screen saver (similar to the other full screen experiences - photo slideshows, video playback, etc.) If you really want the screen saver to pop over the experience, I would recommend taking Windows Media Center out of full screen mode - that should allow your Windows screen saver to pop. We should only block the screen saver when WMC7 is in Music Now Playing full screen.

I hope this helps!

Thanks,

Matt

Hello Matt,

Thank you very much for your detailed reply. I understand the background for the shifting from side to side, but I just wish there was an option to disable this.

When the music has ended, I might be doing something else, or not even being there, and then it would be nice if the pc could go to sleep after some 10 minutes or so. The shifting seems to prevent that. I do not use any screen saver and I absolutely prefer the full screen mode - that's part of what makes Windows 7 Media Center the most user friendly and best looking music player out there.

 Best regards

Hi,

The slideshow is prevented programmatically when you have Music Now Playing running full screen. We explicitly disable the screen saver when full screen on the Music Now Playing experience, regardless of what animations are going on. I'll be sure to keep your feedback in mind for future releases, thanks for the input :)

Thanks,

Matt

Hi Matt, 

would it be a big problem to have a parameter, whether to run screen saver or not while playing music, somewhere in the registry ?

It is really very usefull to automatically turn off monitor/tv when playing music, especially when using MCE with plasma TV or big LCD TV , which power consumption is higher than 100W ...

Of course, better way would be to have this setting directly in MediaCenter application, but any solution for this is acceptable.

I think I'm not the only one, who would like this option ...

Roman