If you use Windows 7 Media Center to watch live TV, you may want to organize your viewing preferences by creating your own Favorite Channels groups. There are a few built-in groups, but creating your own custom favorites allow you far better control over your TV Channel Guide listings.

To get started, Open Windows Media Center and under Tasks, click on the Settings tile.

Then TV…

Then Guide…

Next, Edit Favorite Lineups…

Then click Add New to create your new Favorite Channel lineup.

If you don’t have a keyboard attached you can enter text right from a Windows Media Center Remote. If you navigate to the text box and click the OK button it will bring up a “text-message-style” on-screen display. For a full “Qwerty” keyboard display, click on Layout.

This will allow you to more efficiently type in a name. Click Done when you are finished.

When you’ve entered a name for your Favorite Lineup,  click Save.

Next, select the channels to include in your favorite group by clicking the check box to the left of each channel.

Your Favorite categories will now be available on the View Categories panel on the left of the Channel Guide. To access it, navigate to the left with your remote or click on the panel.

This reveals all the favorite channels groups you’ve created, plus the built-in groups, such as Sports, Movies, Kids, News, etc. These built-in groups don’t strictly contain certain channels, but rather they display channels that are currently showing programs in that category.

Note: You’ll see I created a Sports Favs category. This goes back to my last point. I wanted to have a list of channels that are strictly my preferred Sports channels in addition to all the channels that are showing sports programming.

I find favorite channel groups to be a very handy feature. You can create groups not just based on topics or categories but on the personal tastes of each member of the family. Ex: Dad’s Favorite, Mom’s Favorites, etc. Allowing each person to have their own individual favorite channel lineup.