You can customize the Windows Media Center with a few add-ons/plug-ins. Among them is the Power Playlist available for both Windows 7 and Vista Media Centers. That adds a strip to Windows Media Center with five tiles that play audio slideshow or visualization combinations.

To add Power Playlist to Windows 7 Media Center, open this page and click PowerPlaylist2.0.msi. However, those with Vista should click PowerPlaylist (x86) Installer (Version 1.0). Then when you open the Windows Media Center, you’ll find a PowerPlaylist strip on the Start menu.

Now you can select five tiles on that menu strip. Firstly, there is audio + slideshow that opens a picture slideshow with background audio as in the shot below. If you select the slideshow tile you can play the same slideshow without any audio.

There are a couple of audio + visualization tiles for you to select. Select one of those to open an audio visualization as in the shot below. You can select alternative visualizations by press the – and + keys.

Select the audio tile to open a music media player as in the shot below. In Vista that includes a couple of tracks to play through, but the Windows 7 Power Playlist might have more. There you can select Visualize and Slideshow options to play the tracks with pictures or visualizations.

So Power Playlist adds a few extra tracks, visualization and slideshow tile options to the Windows Media Center. For further customization options, check out the Media Center Studio software covered in this article.