How to Use Non Certified Play To Devices in Windows 8.1

If you read my blog posts this Spring on enabling legacy DMR’s in Windows 8.0, you know that you had to create individual entries and modify them for each device you have in your home.

Gabe Frost from Microsoft has just shared a single Registry key that will enable all your legacy Digital Media Renderers to appear on the Charms/Devices/Play tab in Windows 8.1.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\PlayTo with a DWORD ShowNonCertifiedDevices with value 1 will enabled all your legacy Digital Media Renderers. Without this modification, Windows Store Apps won’t be able to use the Play function to send content to your non certified devices.

I have an older Samsung TV which without this registry key, is not capable of sending mp4’s on my hard drive to my TV using the Device/Play Charm. You can see below that it appears as TV, Not Windows Certified.

 

As before, your first step is to insure your device works as expected on the Classic Desktop with your Photos, Music, and Videos (depending on the device, not all would be appropriate).

Fire up regedit.exe by typing regedit.exe on the Start screen, acknowledge UAC and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft

Create a NEW key by right clicking Microsoft and name it PlayTo

Once the key is created, right click it and create a new DWord

 

 

The new Dword should be named ShowNonCertifiedDevices. After you have created the key, right click, edit and change the value from 0 to 1.

End result: My non certified Samsung TV shows up in the Play menu from the Devices Charm and successfully can send to my TV.

 

Note: You alternatively could use HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\PlayTo with a DWORD ShowNonCertifiedDevices with value 1 which would limit functionality on a per user basis.