Windows Vista Beta 2
Today we’re making Windows Vista Beta 2 available. See Microsoft Windows Vista Beta 2 Fact Sheet:
Microsoft Corp. has released Windows Vista™ Beta 2 to developers and IT professionals with Microsoft® Developer Network (MSDN®) and TechNet subscriptions, as well as to members of the Technology Adoption Program (TAP) and the TechBeta program. Microsoft will also make Windows Vista Beta 2 more broadly available in the coming weeks as part of the Windows Vista Customer Preview Program (CPP)
For those of you wishing to test out the Windows Vista version of Media Center this is definitely the best build to date. In fact, I’ve been running it at home as my primary Media Center for a weeks now and it works pretty good (my biggest compliant is that 5.1 audio isn’t working for me). But as always, there are a lot of ‘fit and finish’ issues with this beta release that will be fixed by RTM. Also, expect changes to the design. While this release is fairly representative of what you’ll see next January, later builds, like the one I run in the office have a lot of fixes and improvements that this public beta 2 build does not. That said, we’d still love to hear your feedback and answer your questions. Leave posts on this blog, or that of any of the other MSFT MCE bloggers as appropriate (for instance, UX/UI concerns are best discussed here and platform issues over at Aaron’s or Charlie’s), or leave a comment our beta newsgroups. There’s still some time left for us to react to your feedback and ensure we ship the best, most exciting version of MCE yet.
Update: For more information checkout the Windows Vista site.
I am sucking Vista Beta 2 and Office 2007 Beta 2 down now.
Looking forward to seeing how it goes! I just hope all my hardware is supported.
Xbox 360 still the only type of extender supported.
Loosing all my hopes on Softsled.
Too bad. Can’t really understand why MS keeps postponing/rejecting this feature request.
I’m sure Microsoft has reasons why existing extenders (save Xbox 360) won’t be compatible with Vista going forward.
There will be new Extenders coming out for Vista. Hopefully their future upgradeability beyond Vista will not be like the V1 Extenders.
I’ll blog more about it as the information becomes available @ http://jtsang.blogspot.com
Does the new media centre support AC3? Apparently MCE 2005 doesn’t support AC3 so there is no sound with HDTV in Australia.
Matt, I could not help notice this: “Also, expect changes to the design” - I don’t think I like you saying that ;-)
I have been waiting with my own development for Vista to this Beta 2, generally because I wanted to be sure that I was giving the user the feel of the Media Center in general - third party programs just isen’t nice using if their functionality and operation is completely different than the rest of the Media Center.
This generally means that I will have to wait even longer for doing UI for Vista.
Any comment on when we can expect the user functionality to be something we can rely on?
Regards,
Brian
Binnerup, email me and we can talk about what will affect you.
Rory, AC3 works just fine for me in MCE 2005 if you have the AC3 codec installed (I use http://ac3filter.sourceforge.net). I haven’t been able to get it to work in Vista yet, but then again, I can’t get any 5.1 to work in Vista either.
Hi Matt
Any news on DVB-C, DVB-S and DVB-S2 support? MS have been dodging this bullet for years now, and from what I can tell there will still be no support for these standards in Vista. Viable alternatives exists for these standards, but as the extenders are still closed to all but Windows Media Center, multi-room digital cable or satellite in Europe is impossible.
With regard to XBOX360 extender support, are the experiences different for XBOX360’s with and without hardrives?
mpinney: with the exception of slower initial load time (due to the need to transfer a 5 meg .xex file from the Media Center computer), there is no difference in Xbox 360 extender experiences with or without a hard drive.
Is there a compatible tuner list anywhere for Beta 2?
Math, can you help us with this question.
I’ve googled the entire internet but cannot find an answer anywhere.
There is a lot of talk about the CableCard support in vista, Unfortunaly here in Europe, we dont have CableCard. What you see here is that DVB-C/T and DVB-S have taken an enormous boost the last half year. Will (the final version of) vista mediacenter support those standards? (both FTA and encrypted channels) ?
If not, will it be possible for 3th parties to add such support via plugins & the mediacenter SDK????
Thanks
Well I have now got Vista running and it looks really sweet. It response quicker than 2005 which I was impressed with. Unfortunately it consistantly exists MCE when I go to the DVD Library though…
A quick poll amongst 7 media center owning friends, all say that the shut down button should still be in the top left hand corner.
moohorse, can you propose a design whereby that works given our start menu redesign? I know I’d be hard pressed to.