February CTP 5308 is available

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.

Comments

  1. smicale
    February 22nd, 2006 | 10:42 pm

    Matt,

    How do i get a copy of build 5308? I am a TechNet Subscriber, but hate waiting for it to come in the mail. Can I download it somewhere?

    Thanks

  2. February 22nd, 2006 | 11:22 pm

    Awesome… Can you post a changelog?

  3. February 23rd, 2006 | 12:21 am

    It’d be massive :).

  4. February 23rd, 2006 | 1:03 am

    Yeah I thought about that for one second after I posted and though… “Im an idiot”

    I have quicker fingers than my brain some times :) Exellent news though!

    The interface on Vista looks mad! I have got the previous version running now! Cant see 5308 at MSDN subscribers though :(

  5. February 23rd, 2006 | 5:05 am

    Does this version support “locally stored dvds”?

  6. osu9400
    February 23rd, 2006 | 9:59 am

    February CTP, what’s that? OH!! You mean “Enterprise CTP.”

  7. vrmerlin
    February 23rd, 2006 | 11:00 am

    Does the new media center work with existing extenders? In particular, if I were to install Vista on my existing HP Media Center, could I still connect my XBox 360 and Linksys WMCE54AG, and see the new interface?

  8. February 23rd, 2006 | 1:08 pm

    Euan, yes, though I don’t know how reliable the playback is at this time.

    Vrmerlin, sorry, this version does not support Extenders.

  9. vrmerlin
    February 23rd, 2006 | 1:14 pm

    … meaning that Vista won’t at all, or that a future CTP will?

  10. February 23rd, 2006 | 1:25 pm

    This CTP version does not support Extenders.

  11. mrphil
    February 23rd, 2006 | 3:58 pm

    Are we getting any closer to “softsled” functionality (aka use Vista as a software extender) in this release, or is that still a “Microsoft cannot comment on future unannounced functionality” feature?

  12. Martijn
    February 23rd, 2006 | 4:05 pm

    Can you already say the april CTP will support extenders like the 360? I’m soo curious how that’s gonna work out. And do you know by the time the xbox needs an update in order to work for Vista MCE as well? Need more input! For now let’s check out your hard work! Thanks.

    p.s. The sidebar is awesome.. It would be very cool if there could be a gadget for the sidebar with a miniscreen (mediaplayer) for watching live tv, movies etc..

  13. February 23rd, 2006 | 5:26 pm

    Hi Matt. I’m not an offical tester, but I’ve seen many of the screen shots that have been posted on the Web of the new UI. Having used the “My Music” interface in 2005 to manage a large collection of tunes, I would like to make the following feature request.

    The following screen from the latest CTP Build looks similar to the current version

    “http://www.jcxp.net/forums/index.php?act=Attach&type=post&id=3203″

    While in this view, it would be nice to have an option in the left column to “Jump to Artist” similar to the right click option in WMP10 “Jump to Artist”

    Having this feature would make it easy to access all of the albums that you own from the selected artist, without the need to go back to the main menu.

    Does this request make sense?

  14. February 23rd, 2006 | 10:20 pm

    Damn! The new beta is 1.1Gb larger! What did you leave out?

    Apparently this is the final cut and no other features are coming in. From here on its mainly bug fixing! Woohoo!

  15. February 24th, 2006 | 4:24 pm

    Doh! I was comparing the 32bit to the 64bit version. Im an idiot.

    Anyway… Ignore that.

    I do have one request. Could the DVD Covers be anti-aliased? They have the jaggies bad. Now usually I wouldnt care but everything else looks smooth and yet the covers have the jaggies.

    Although I am using fairly large folder.jpg files. What is the standard size for that field? If I know that I will just resize my pics.

  16. Eds
    February 28th, 2006 | 10:51 am

    Is a registry setting change required to make DVDs on Disk appear. My library of disks were not accessible from the DVD or Video modules of MCE. I checked the registry but didn’t find anything analogous to the ShowGallery registry change required under MCE 2005.

  17. February 28th, 2006 | 1:24 pm

    Eds, you should find your local DVDs in the ‘movie library’. Were they showing up in MCE 2005 but are no longer on Vista?

  18. February 28th, 2006 | 1:33 pm

    Tyler, the request makes sense, I’ll pass it along to the team.

    MrPhil/Martjin, ‘Microsoft cannot comment on future unannounced functionality’.

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