RSSIn-depth with the Windows 7 Media Center
By Nate Mook | Published October 28, 2008, 8:16 PM
If you're a Windows Media Center user, you don't want to miss an in-depth look at what changes are coming with Windows 7. Microsoft's Charlie Owen, who works on Media Center, goes through every new feature along with screenshots.
The new Media Center is available in the M3 build of Windows 7 that is being distributed at PDC. Some of the additions include: an on-screen keyboard, H.264 playback, bigger video thumbnails, Turbo Scroll for those with large libraries, and revamped photo capabilities.
I absolutely love the Vista version of Media Center, although I am waiting for it to support multi-monitor by not locking the mouse cursor into the application when running fullscreen on one monitor. Vista's Media Player cursor works fine, only Vista's Media Center has this issue.
An annoyance in an otherwise excellent application.
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- Keyboard: Already exists as an Accessibility utility consistently across all applications (fail)
- Turbo scroll: Yes! But why do I need to wait for a new OS for this 8-| (kinda score)
- The rest: Whatever... (ok...)
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Perhaps these things are for the rest of us who would like to see them in Media Center.
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Don't be too sure. MSFT are well known to target exclusively imaginary user groups.
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The thumbnail went from great in MCE2005 to miniature in VMC. They need to find a compromise in MC7.
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Yeah, but come on. All of this stuff besides H.264 sounds like minor and cosmetic additions. They should decouple MC from the OS. What does this have to do with the operation of the computer..?
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Nothing huge revealed for those already running TV Pack 2008. Not that the UI improvements are a bad thing.
The one glaring problem brought by the TV Pack is the implementation of a name wtv format for recording, which managed to break a feature in the public API utilized by commercial skipping addons. We can pray that maybe MS has fixed the bug (if it wasn't deliberate).
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Move along..... nothing to see here......
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Media Center is my favorite app of all time.
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Mine is a modded X-Box :)
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