Before we start our first MCML program, you are going to need two components.

   First, your development environment. Throughout this blog, I will be talking about developing in Visual Studio 2005. You may also be able to perform exactly the same actions in Visual C# Express Edition (the free version from Microsoft). Make sure that the program is installed and running before we continue to the next step.

   The Media Center SDK gives us a number of tools (not to mention samples and some reference documentation) to help us with the project. While I've posted this link before, I'll post it again just for the hell of it.

    http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=A43EA0B7-B85F-4612-AA08-3BF128C5873E&displaylang=en

   Try to install the SDK after installing Visual Studio. If you do it the other way around you have to spend some time buggering-around with your configuration. Do it in the right order and everything will be fine.