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Tuesday 28 October 2008

Media Center News from PDC

Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference running on Oct 27-30.

Charlie Owen from Microsoft has announced on his blog, details about Media Center in Windows 7 talking about some of the new features.

  • The Start Menu gets a slight update, I have seen this in action a few weeks ago and it’s not a massive change but it does look better and it remembers where you were last
  • The now playing thumbnail is bigger
  • Music performance improvements
  • Much better details view and improved now playing
  • Improved Ratings
  • Turbo Scroll, this is something that you have to see in action to get and if you have large libraries you will love this!
  • Improved Picture library including new slideshows, and Shared Libraries
  • TV Feature Pack is including in Windows 7!
  • New clickable seek bar in TV and videos
  • Online Media replaced with “Extras”
  • New text entry screen
  • New gadgets for the sidebar



This looks familar, looks like the Zune Album wall!





This is good news and was expected with HD TV in many countries now requiring H.264 support

"H.264 playback is now supported out of the box with Windows 7 -- including on Media Center Extenders – both standalone hardware implementations AND on the XBox 360 when in Extender mode. I know a few people on http://www.thegreenbutton.com who will rejoice."

No mention of Divx however ?

This was also expected for Media Center on Windows 7

"For starters, you get all of the enhancements made available with the TV Pack (including those for United States customers). For more information on the TV Pack check out this post at The Green Button: http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/282555.aspx. If you recall, the TV Pack was designed to enable TV standards in Asia and Europe. There are some nice additions in this area for Windows 7..."

Overall I'm very impressed with how this is looking and with some of the new features, I really can't wait for Windows 7. Well done eHome team!

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