Download Windows Vista Beta 2
Looks like you can now: Download Windows Vista Beta 2.
Download it, install it and send us feedback either via newsgroups, blog comments, or by emailing us.
And for what it’s worth, I’m running beta 2 at home in my living room.
I am running it now. Works really well! The interface is so much cleaner and easier. And it feels faster and more responsive than XP.
My only complaint is hardware support :( No 5.1 support for me yet.
Matt.. I can’t commend you and the team enough on the new MCE for Vista. It’s truly stunning, and a worthy progression of what is already a superb platform.
My only criticism at this point is as follows. I was gutted to find that under Pictures & Videos that playlists for Videos still isn’t implemented. This was something I really and truly just expected to see in the latest build. As music video collections are fast becoming as commonplace as music collections, particularly with the introduction of purchasable videos via providers such as http://www.musicbrigade.com, MCE should cater to those users wanting to treat their music videos in a similar fashion to that of music. Let’s face it — MCE is very much a visual experience, and musicians go to great lengths to portray their vision through music video. Your platform and the music video medium are clearly made to work together — why aren’t they? Okay, maybe I’m waffling on a bit.. but I am passionate about this subject.
To be able to set up video playlists would really complete the Videos section of MCE. It’s the only thing I see missing from an otherwise outstanding piece of software. Congratulations on a stellar product, and I can’t wait to see where we go from here.
I had Win Vista beta loaded and really liked it except for the following exception.
No update drivers for HP printer, Quicken, Systematic Antivirus and Nero DC/DVD burning software.
Therefore, I had to reformat my hard drive after enjoying the program very much so I could have the above programs working.
Its a shame as you have a good program in Vista, nice desktop, etc. It is just that the above programs will not work with it and I defently need them.
Keep up the good work
looks realy nice hell of a thing to try and boot and run wif 512 ram but
I am having a great time playing with it. I was able to burn a dvd of the beta 2 dvd I made using nero with no trouble. I have some issues with the control panel freezing and the network panel freezes as well. Overall it’s fairly stable, I set up a dual boot of mce2005 and vista to keep a good working system. My HDTV Wonder works ok. With my music on a NAS box with about 80 gig of MP3’s the performance with viewing the library thumbnails is a little slow. I am surprised the system does not cache the data somewhere and so it does not have to scan through them each time I start it up. Maybe I’m doing something wrong. Most apps I use work ok with a few ocx’s that won’t register but the apps seem to work ok. I am looking forward to the future finished product. Pretty Slick !
Any news on when the MCE extender functionality will be available for us PAL/Region 2/European XBOX 360 users? It was much to my dismay that I discovered it is not part of the official Beta 2/CPP release.
maurice, video playlist creation is a frequent feature request. I hope we add it in a future version. In the meantime there is a plugin available: http://mediacenter.mattgoyer.com/archives/2006/03/13/1090
Snoot,
I noticed you say your ATI HDTV Wonder works fine with Vista.
What drivers are you using for the Wondet HDTV video card?
Thanks !
I am using the ati vista beta catylist drivers for my x300 graphics card and followed the thread over at greenbutton.com I don’t recall the exact point where the HDTV portion started working however.
“By default the HDTV Wonder does work in MCE but only the ATSC (digital) component actually works. The HDTV Wonder NTSC (analog) component can be enabled in Windows vista Beta 2 by using the infamous “Kram†mod pack AKA “MCE4.10kvâ€. In the case of the HDTV Wonder, only the “MCEE†pack from the “Kram†mod pack is necessary to enable the NTSC tuner. This will likely allow for the HDTV Wonder to serve as the only tuner in a Vista Beta 2 system and in a Vista Beta 2 multi-tuner system the HDTV Wonder can also serve as a secondary NTSC tuner. However, do keep in mind that the HDTV Wonder tuner will likely be set as the default/primary tuner and thus should be set as secondary in a multi-tuner environment to help reduce conflicts with the HDTV Wonder ATSC tuner. As always the hardware limitation of the HDTV Wonder NTSC/ATSC components exists and cannot be used simultaneously.
AIW cards with the Theater 200 chip such as the AIW 9×00, AIW X800xxx and possibly the AIW X1000 family could be installed and configured in Vista Beta 2 using the entire “Kram†mod pack.
However, it is likely best to do a custom install, possibly using the Vista beta Cat drivers as well.
Not really sure how any of this would work on the 64bit version of vista Beta 2 though (not well one would think).
Thanks goes out to Kram for his work in this area and all those who preceded him. People are still benefiting from it!!!
”
quoted from post hope that’s allowed here.
I’ve downloaded it against better judgement :P.
Alter a few hour’s i gave up.
I want to do two things, play music and watch tv, neither works good enough.
My celeron 2400 just couldn’t play tv through a Hauppage 500 MCE without skipping and seaching for music is worse than in MCE 2005. I’ve got about 1600 albums and for no reason the mediacenter sometimes dicides to update the album list. Scanning at 2 albums per second it takes 13 minutes for the albumnames to stop jumping ’round. At least it’s counting so you can see how much longer it takes.
While scanning for analog tv channels it finds 140 channels while i only have about 35, i’ll have to use a piece of paper to write down which channel is the best and dactivate the others. Because the frequency is no longer visible but only the stationname i’ll have to watch every single channel. Why a 20 year old tv can scan for channels without problems and a new MCE system can’t is completely beyond me.
And why is MCE still replacing albumart, nobody uses this function because it doesn’t work, you always get the wrong albumart, it’s anoying.
In my opinion it’s just ‘2005 with another skin, i really don’t see what the big deal is, a small update would make MCE 2005 the same as Vista MCE.
I am using MCE (for the first time) on vista beta 2 on a mac mini. I like it and I am trying to convince my wife to like it.
My only problem is the TV tuner, certainly more memory has made MCE and the OS in general much faster but my tuner (Compro VideoMate U3) is having a hard time. On what would appear to be strong signals the picture and recording are fine. For other channels its a bit of a hit and miss affair.
What would be really helpful is
1) signal strength indicator for dtv signals (ideally per channel)
2) when setting up tv tuner not having to download every time
3) a soft on screen eject button for when using a CD/DVD (the MCE remote doesn’t have one).
4) when ripping CD’s can the data goto the public folder?
5) ideally adding visualisations when playing visualisation
Occassionally I also find that swapping between live tv and other media the sound/picture goes awry (no sound or blank).
Occassionally when going to online hotspot the screen goes white - back and forward and it goes to the proper screen
4 and 5 I suppose can be tackled by media player customization.
Add to the list a mute display - given my setup is a bit shaky I often get confused when no sound is coming out. Is it the device disabled, the cable plugged in, a software fault or simply that I have it on mute. some grpahic would be lovely,
I recently bought a HP laptop with vista home premium loaded. However I cant seem to run the media center. When i run it, it says - Windows cannot find ‘C:\Windows\ehome\ehshell.exe’ Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again. Can anyone help me out here?