Since we released the February/Enterprise CTP, build 5308 of Windows Vista, I have spent a few minutes each day reading through our beta newsgroups, microsoft.beta.longhorn.mce.*. Unfortunately I see a lot of posts about black screens, blue screens, glitching, freezes, etc. And that’s if the user was able to get the build with drivers installed!

I wish you were all having a better experience. Understand that we feel your pain. For instance, I’m running 5308 here at the office on a slightly older Dell machine and see the same issues you see. At home, I’ve been installing weekly builds since December. So every week, at least once, I go through the pains of trying to install Windows Vista, configuring it and MCE for my tastes, and then using it. The good news is that 5308 is a snapshot of where we were at a certain point in the development cycle and that quality improves every week. I haven’t yet switched over to using my Windows Vista machine 100% at home but expect to do so any week now. Expect our next pre-release to be higher quailty than what you’re struggling with today.

So hang in there. Your feedback is valuable!

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Extreme Tech, Why Windows Vista Won’t Suck

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Press release, Microsoft Unveils Windows Vista Product Lineup.

What this means is that Media Center will no longer be a standalone SKU, instead it will be available on both the Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate SKUs. This is great because:

• You can now upgrade your existing PC so that it has MCE capabilities!
• 32 and 64 bit versions will now be available (I’m running 64bit at home)
• MCE and tablet, the two ‘out of band’ SKUs, are together at last
• You can now use MCE in a domain joined environment
• No more ’sonic encoders’, the burn engine is built in
• MCE will now have incredible reach

Fall 2006 is going to be when MCE crosses over into the mainstream.

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Today marks my 2nd year anniversary of working at Microsoft. Of course, as little as four years ago it’s clear that I never imagined ending up here. Funny how things change. In two years though I’ve had the good fortune of working on a lot of stuff. Some of the highlights:

• Shipped Windows Media Center 2005: Handled firedrills during the endgame
• Shipped TweakMCE: Tens of thousands of downloads a month
• Shipped Windows Media Center 2005 Update Rollup2: Brought DVD changer functionality to market
• Shipped Netflix demo for PDC: Shown on stage at PDC keynote
• Close to shipping Windows Vista: Own movies + dvd and lots of other features from beginning to end
• New projects: Just started working on two new exciting projects.

Needless to say I’ve learned way more than I ever imagined and had a fun time doing so since the people here are great.

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Today we released the February CTP, build 5308 of Windows Vista. Download it, install it, and check out Media Center. Be sure to leave us feedback in the news groups or on our blogs. While the build still has lots of bugs and many things about the UX could change, now is the best time to give us feedback on what you like and what you don’t like.

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When someone isn’t at work for whatever reason they’re OOF. This is short for out of office. Now sometimes when someone is OOF co-workers like to put on their prankster hats. Recently a Media Center test engineer was on vacation. While gone the pranksters moved his office to the main stairwell of our building:

And then turned his old office into an eHome lounge (we’re currently short on space and don’t have a lounge):

Now this prank likely doesn’t rank too highly in the Microsoft office pranks hall of fame; old timers love to tell us new kids about the tricks they used to pull. But none-the-less, it’s the most excitment our office space has seen in a while.

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Euan is working on a DVD cover grabber for those of you using My DVDs. Great to see!

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I was bummed to read PC World’s Ten Reasons to Buy Windows Vista and not find Media Center on the list. Why? We’re doing lots of exciting new stuff with Media Center:

• OCUR - Record premium HD content!
• Visual refresh to the start page, galleries and overlays
• Music library perf improvements
• Support for chained DVD changers
• Re-thinking of how we organize experiences like music, pictures and videos
• TV mini-guide
• And much much more…

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I spent some more time today learning about the information that gets posted to the system builder site. Sounds like the DVD changer hardware requirements were in fact published in a hardware requirements spreadsheet that got posted to beta place and if you had access to beta place then you had access to DVD changer information pre-launch. However, it does sound like there has been a breakdown somewhere because the hardware requirements information that was made available during the beta time frame has not been posted to the system builder site post launch. What I’m doing now is getting in touch with the owners of the system builder site and giving them the information on both the DVD changer and away mode so that they can add that information as an addendum to the power point that you folks are already aware of. Is there any other Emerald hardware requirement information that you would like to see disclosed?

I’m sorry, this situation clearly sucks. I thought the information had always been available and when I dug into the situation last week it looked like it was available but digging even deeper (thanks for pushing so hard) it looks like we screwed up. You can believe your conspiracy theories but this really looks like an accident.

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I got a question about chaining changers the other day… Yes, you can chain changers in Media Center Edition 2005 UR2. However, this was a ‘non feature’. Non features are ’stuff we are not going out of our way to do, but we don’t mind if it happens anyway ‘. So we didn’t go out of our way to enable it and as a result it works in the My DVDs gallery but not in Manage DVDs. The downside to this is if you insert a non-movie DVD in a changer other than the one showing up in Manage Discs you will not be able to eject it. The good news is we have already fixed this bug in Vista and so Vista will support chained changers.

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