Using Pause, Play, Replay, and Skip

Now for the fancy stuff. As with many of Media Center's most powerful features, time-shifting radio transmissions is deceptively easy. Here's how it works:

• Pause— To stop the radio reception in its tracks, just press the Pause button on the remote control, click the Pause button in the on-screen transport controls using the mouse, or press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+P. Radio will let you pause the broadcast for up to 30 minutes. A progress bar will be displayed, as shown in Figure 15.6.

  Figure 15.6. When you pause the broadcast, Media Center automatically displays a progress bar, showing how much memory buffer is available.

  

  caution

  Although selecting the Start FM button onscreen to resume airplay of your broadcast will technically do the job, it will also erase the memory buffer. That's fine if you want a fresh start and don't care about losing the ability to replay the previous 30 minutes of audio. If that matters to you, just use the Play button to resume.

  
  

• Play— To resume playing the broadcast with the remote control, press the Pause button again, or press the Play button. The same principle applies to the mouse and keyboard commands. You can also select Start FM from the FM Radio screen.

  tip

  As you might expect, you can stop the broadcast at any time by pressing the Stop button on your remote, or by clicking the square Stop icon on the transport control. What you might not realize is that Media Center will continue to record the audio from that point. If you resume playing the radio again within the next 30 minutes, it will continue playing from the point where you left off.

  
  

• Replay— Although you can't actually use the Rew and Fwd buttons in Radio, you can accomplish the same thing by pressing the Replay and Skip buttons to reverse or advance through the memory buffer. Replay skips back 7 seconds. If you are paused when you press the Replay button, the audio will remain paused at the earlier point. Press Play or select Start FM to resume the broadcast from that point. Press Replay repeatedly to reverse up to 30 minutes into the broadcast.

• Skip— The Skip button will advance through the memory buffer in 29-second increments, until you reach the end of the buffer. As with pressing Replay, if you are paused when you select Skip, you'll remain paused until you press Play, press Pause again, or select Start FM.