The Media Center Sandbox

Regardless of what this key is set to the Volume Display indicator ALWAYS pops up when volume up or down is pressed:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\VolumeDisplay\DisableVolumeDisplay

Is there a way to turn this off?

Thanks,

R. Sparrow

P.S. Working with RC1

I'm just curious why you would think that registry key would affect the volume display?

No, there is no way to turn it off.

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Scott Moore (Microsoft)

I guessed this based on the name of the registry setting and its location in the registry.

 

However, let me be more specific. We have volume indicators in our application that that we’d prefer to use instead of the box that pops up in the upper right side of the screen when the volume or mute status is changed.

 

Also, it pops up when there’s really not a change to Media Center’s volume. For example, we have an music based application that can be controlled with our MCE plugin. We use Media Foundation to control the volume of OUR application. The “master device volume” nor the “media center application volume” is changed but the mce popup still comes up over our application. This confuses the user because the volume indicator in the pop up is not changing when the audio that they are listening to in our app is changing.

 

The other issue is that the “media center’s volume control” appears to be tied to the audio device’s main volume. Instead of the “media center application volume”. I need to look into this a bit more. I'm sure there might be a good reason for this in some cases but I'd like it to be a setting if possible.

 

If these issues were addressed and the volume display indicator ONLY popped up when the “media center application volume” is changed we would not be looking to disable it.

 

Otherwise we would just like to turn off this volume indicator and manage the user notification with a combination of our foreground and our background MCE applications. (Our solution is a part of a dedicated MCE system.)

 

Thanks,

R. Sparrow

Your observation is correct - our volume UI is tied to the audio device's main volume rather than the "media center application volume"  We considered making this change, but unfortunately did not have the time for it, thus this is not something that will not be changing before we ship Vista.

You said:

"The “master device volume” nor the “media center application volume” is changed but the mce popup still comes up over our application"

Do you mean that neither of these are changing, but our volume UI still appears?  Or, are you saying that only the master device volume is changing, and this causes our volume UI to appear.  If it's the latter case, then it would be by design per above.

Unfortunately, as I stated earlier, there is no mechanism to disable our Volume UI.  The registry key that you found is completely unrelated to that overlay.

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Scott Moore (Microsoft)

Thanks for the explanation and sorry for the confusion with the registry key.

 

To clarify, the call we make is not a Media Foundation call but a WASAPI (Windows Audio Session API) call:

 

ISimpleAudioVolume::SetMasterVolume (The SetMasterVolume method sets the master volume level for the audio session.) Don’t be confused over the name it’s only to control our audio session not the Master Volume for the audio device. (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/CoreAud/htm/isimpleaudiovolumesetmastervolume.asp).

 

When we make that call to update the volume for our application the volume indicator pops up in MCE.

 

Secondly, it would be VERY useful, even though Microsoft at this time only controls the device volume, for MCE to have a way, through the SDK, to control that application level volume of MCE. For example extend the MCE SDK on the AudioMixer Object have properties like AppVolumeUp, AppVolumeDown, AppVolume, AppMute those calls would only work with the MCE application level volume control.

 

FYI.. We have already tried to control this directly using the WASAPI but it’s not allowed. See our post: (http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=699016&SiteID=1&mode=1).

 

R. Sparrow

Scott,

I'd like to update you and correct something I've said. Looks like I was incorrect, the volume display is NOT coming up when we use that call to adjust the volume in our other app. It looks like commands that we thought we were trapping were still going through to MCE in addition to our app and that is why MCE was showing it’s volume display. I’m sorry for the confusion and thank you for your help.

We would still like to be able to control the app level volume through the SDK. ;-)

Thanks,

R. Sparrow

 

When I change my volume, the output changes, but the on-screen display for MCE doesn't appear.
Is there any way to repair this?

It does appear in my Media Center. Are you using the MediaCenterEnvironment.AudioMixer object?