It seems there are issues with Autoplay and assigning defaults with media center in Windows 7 and MS has not released a fix yet. At least I had this issue with the Beta as well as the RC version, I thought it would be fixed by the final, but no.
I found this site Winhelponline (http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/restore-windows-media-center-autoplay-entries-windows-7/) and there is a ready made fix there that works.
Basically what is done here is to import the missing registry keys from Vista in a ready made package.
So I learned something new yesterday. I've slowly been setting up my HTPC and I finally figured out what the heck to do with this IR blaster thing.
OK, first a little background here, over a year ago I bought this TV card, AVerTV Combo PCI-E (http://www.avermedia-usa.com/AVerTV/product/ProductDetail.aspx?Id=24) for my computer to watch and record TV. It came with the remote and the receiver and a wire with a little bitty red thing on the end. After installing it and hooking up the receiver and testing the remote it all worked fine so I threw that little wire thing in a drawer and forgot about it. Since I'm doing a dedicated HTPC now I moved the TV card from my main system to the HTPC and went about setting it up with my cable box. I'm able to run two lines out of my cable box one is with an HDMI cable and goes straight to the TV and another, coax, goes to the TV card. Where I kept running into problems was with getting my Media center remote to change the channel on the cable box as well as the Media center/computer simultaneously. I just could not figure it out. After doing some looking around on the web I came across this page, IR Bender IR Control Solution. (http://www.urcsupport.com/html.php?page_id=472) It then dawned on me that that is what that wire with the little red thing is for. After all this time I still had it in the drawer I tossed it in all that time ago. I got it out and hooked it up to the back up the Media Center remote receiver and stuck the little red thing on the cable box and "it works".
I can now change the channel on the cable box and in Media Center with either the Media Center remote or the keyboard and now I can use my HTPC as a digital VCR for recording programs.
Cool.