Media Center TV Muting without System Volume Muting

Question

Often during commercials broadcast on TV, I'll watch a YouTube video.

Is there a way to mute Windows 7 Media Center without muting the system volume?

Answer 1

Use the built-in volume mixer, it can mute each application individually.

Answer 2

We know this volume mixer has the ability. But it should not be so cumbersome that you need to open the mixer, scroll across to the media center slider, click mute when all you want to do is mute the sound for a moment.

I tried to code my own Mute WMC app but the API is tedious and undocumented. Even if you try and think outside the box, the people who wrote the mixer did not even provide reliable names to the objects in the mixer itself, so getting the handles to manually code a Mute of the Mute for Windows Media Center is an impossible task when all you want is one simple 'bug' - as opposed to their by design 'feature'.

AutoHotkey also has an answer, but it's flimsy.

Answer 3

There is a workaround:

Use the newest version of NirCmd and run it with:

nircmd.exe muteappvolume ehshell.exe 2

to mute/unmute WMC.

Details here:

http://informazio.de/blog/?p=6