Windows Media Center organizes and displays music found on the computer. Music can then be played by selecting "My Music" from the Start Menu. In the default view, albums are arranged in alphabetical order with accompanying album art. Album art can be downloaded off the Internet automatically, or it can be added manually into Media Center. The user can create playlists of different songs or albums, but once created, playlists cannot be edited.

When playing music, the user can pause and fast forward music, as long as Media Center is not in the "View Queue" mode. The user also has the option to shuffle or repeat music in the queue. Visualizations, as in Windows Media Player, can also be viewed, although Extenders do not have this option.

Windows Media Center has the ability to synchronize media with certain portable devices. These devices include Windows Mobile Pocket PCs, Smartphones, Portable Media Centers, and other players that can sync with Windows Media Player.

While synchronizing television shows, Windows Media Center encodes the shows using Windows Media Encoder to a Windows Media Video format at a lower quality than the DVR-MS format used for viewing on the desktop media center. This is to complement the limited storage space and processing power of such portable devices. Optionally, music can also be re-encoded to a smaller file size upon synchronization.

Like TiVo, Windows Media Center allows fast-forwarding through commercials of recorded programs. In fact, some users deliberately wait 10-15 minutes to start watching a program in the live buffer so they can fast-forward through the commercials and catch up to "live TV" by the end of the program.

Windows Media Center provides the ability (not supported by Microsoft) to skip commercials automatically, by installing external plug-ins like DVRMSToolbox, Lifextender or MCEBuddy.

The final version of Windows XP Media Center Edition was 2005 Update Rollup 2 (UR2), which is basically Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (SP2) with the additional Media Center functionality. The main feature of Windows Professional Edition that Media Center 2005 lacks is support for Domain Controllers. XP MCE 2005 was the first version of Media Center that could be bought other than on a pre-built system, but it was available only under OEM licensing.

Windows XP Media Center 2005 runs well on relatively low-end hardware, such as a Celeron D with integrated graphics (256 MB of video memory required to view HDTV content).

Windows Media Center in Windows Vista includes a redesigned menu system that takes advantage of the graphics capabilities of the operating system as well as the common 16:9 aspect ratio. Each button in the main menu, which contains sections such as "Music", "Videos", and "TV", gets encased in a box when selected, and for each selection, a sub-menu comes up, extending horizontally.

When any of the options is selected, the entries for each are presented in a grid-like structure, with each item being identified by album art, if it's an audio file, or a thumbnail image if it is a picture, a video or a TV recording, and other related options, such as different views for the music collection if "Music" is selected, extend horizontally along the top of the grid. Similarly, other items are identified by suggestive artwork. The grid displaying the items is also extended horizontally, and the selected item is enlarged compared to the rest.

On July 16, 2008, Microsoft released the Media Center TV Pack 2008 after the product was beta-tested between late May and early June 2008. The software, which was previously codenamed "Fiji", was released as an OEM only feature and will not be released as a standalone update for people who have already bought a computer with Vista Home Premium or Vista Ultimate installed.

Microsoft has also confirmed that, unlike other Feature Packs released for Windows Vista SP1, that TV Pack 2008 will not be included in Windows Vista Service Pack 2. Microsoft has not commented as to why TV Pack 2008 will not be included in the next Windows service pack.

Aside from changes to the UI, other new features include: improved control over TV tuners, replacement of the .dvr-ms filetype with .wtv files, favorite channels listing, ability to change digital OTA channel numbers, digital OTA subchannel support, native QAM support, DVB-S support, MHEG support (digital interactive, e.g BBCi) and heterogeneous TV tuner support. In the beta there was support for H.264 (which allows for DirecTV) streams, however that feature has since been removed from the release version.

Windows Client Business Group manager Ben Green in an interview said that "The product is designed to add new television standards support, enhance the user interface and set up experience, and add interactive TV features to Windows Media Center."

The 32-bit Installer for the TV Pack was leaked on August 6, 2008 in the reply to EngadgetHD's article reviewing a copy of the update. The installer was then taken down from the source but subsequently has been posted to many other sites and the links to both the 32-bit and 64-bit installers can be found on AVS Forum. When TV Pack is installed, its possible in Vista Home Premium to have 2 tuners of each type supported, and within Vista Ultimate this limit is raised to 4 tuners per type, allowing therefore to have 4 DVB-S and 4 DVB-T tuners working concurrently.