Artist and AlbumArtist in VMC Music

[zigzag]

Windows media player (11) gets the distinction between Album Artist and Contributing Artist correct.

A search By Contributing artist in MP will show all the Performers of each track in Compilation or Soundtrack albums.
A search by Artist in MP will show the Album artist "Various" or whatever you have chosen to call the Album artist on compilation CD's.

Not so Vista Media Center. In the Music choices along the top of the screen there are options of "Artist" and Album Artist". There is no difference in the listing displayed by these options. You always get Album Artist whichever one you choose.

The fact that there are 2 different options, must mean (I thought) that I have missed a setting somewhere, or there is a hack that will allow VMC to do it's proper search job.
I have searched and surfed, and all I can find is entries in Vista wish lists for future editions.
There must be thousands of us out there with the same problem.

Please someone tell me that there is a way around this.

Regards,

[zigzag]

I think I have solved this problem myself. Anyway here is the info in case anyone else has the same question.

ALBUM ARTIST AS 'VARIOUS', TRACK ARTIST AS INDIVIDUAL PERFORMER.
In Media player:
In the Contributing Artist view, each track artist is shown.
In the Artist view, the album artist of 'Various' is shown.
In Media Center:
In the Artist view, the album artist of 'Various' is shown
In the Album Artist view, the album artist of 'Various' is shown

ALBUM ARTIST AS blank, TRACK ARTIST AS INDIVIDUAL PERFORMER.
In Media player:
In the Contributing Artist view, each track artist is shown.
In the Artist view, each track artist is shown
(Media player does not list the album as unknown artist)
In Media Center:
In the Artist view, each track artist is shown
In the Album Artist view, each track artist is shown

The Album Artist view in VMC is a text based layout.
The VMC Artist view shows the artist name written vertically, with the album art of the compilation CD stacked next to the name. If there are 10 different artists on the CD, the CD will be listed 10 times.

There is a minor downside in Media Player in leaving the Album Artist blank. When you view by album, a compilation CD will be shown not with 'Various" as the artist, but the first artist MP finds, in alphabetical order, on the album.

The Advanced Tag Editor inside Media Player is very powerful, and will allow changes to multiple selections in certain cases. There is no need for 3rd party id3 taggers to be used.

Now we just have to figure out how to display the track artist next to each track, when viewing a compilation album in VMC.