Chris Prillo has an excellent post giving us lots of feedback on Windows Vista. He even has a small amount of feedback for the MCE team:

The new Media Center software is amazing. However, the buttons to dig deeper into the different sections seem to be using stock images rather than actual thumbnails on your machine. Sloppy, or intentional? If intentional, why?

Here’s the button he’s talking about (we refer to it as a tile).

The stock photos in the Start Menu tiles are intentional. The reason we can’t generate the tiles based on actual content in your libraries is that it would severly impact the performance of the start menu because for each tile representing a library we’d need to crawl the library, extract thumbnails, resize them, turn them into a composite image, etc. all before we can render the Start Menu!

Originally we were disappointed that the tiles couldn’t be representative, but given how small the images are in the tile I don’t know how helpful it would be to actually have your collection represented by the tile. So in the case, I think we definitely made the right decision to trade design for performance.

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Bill Gates mentions Media Center in his WinHEC keynote the other day:

In terms of form factors for the Windows PC, one of the great successes over the last several years has been Media Center Edition of Windows. A year ago it was a little bit of a phenomenon, two years ago it really didn’t exist. It’s this year that we’re getting all of the elements to come together, the connections to the cable video, the satellite video, connecting up to those standards on a global basis, and people really can expect the PC to be the place where everything comes together, video over the Internet, where the innovation is great, but also the traditional video sources coming together into one place. So that energy we’ve put around Media Center has paid off in a very big way.

I couldn’t agree more, Windows Vista will really be the release where Media Center comes together.

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I’m sure many of us were unable to attend Will Poole’s WinHEC keynote yesterday so I thought I’d quickly scan the transcript and see what was announced for Media Center. Here are some highlights:

• [MCE has] just been a breakout success for us. Today we’ve sold over 10 million copies with our partners of Media Center PCs, and we’re selling at a rate of over 1 million per month.
• One more Sideshow device, the last one here is this WiFi remote from Exceptional Innovation. This remote is used to control your Media Center PC. It can function as a voice over IP handset, and even as a portable music player. With Sideshow technology integrated into this device we’re able to access your media library from any PC in your house, and select songs for playback. You’re also able to see your program listings for your TV, and select shows that you’d like to record. So really some cool scenarios, and that’s whether the TV is on or off, and whether that PC is in the room that you’re in or in another room in the house. CEPro has an article with photos.
• What I can do now is I can actually watch and record the latest movies from premium channels like HBO right onto my machine in high definition. Previous versions of Windows let you record standard def over the air, now I can watch and record the high definition.
• Over a million hours of extended usage have been logged today on Xbox 360s.
• We’ve been working with several companies to have products available to for launch, and today we’re announcing the Media Center Extender Partner Program. What that program will do is, it will allow companies to have access to design information, documentation, and the necessary components to embed Extender functionality into devices like TVs, DVD players, set-top boxes, and digital media adapters.

In my opinion the biggest news is the announcement of a partner program for equiment manufacturers who want to build their own Extenders. They even showed a working design from Sigma Designs. So this should enable tons of new exciting form factors!

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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.

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If you’re part of the CTP program we just released build #5365. With each new build expect MCE stability to increase. However, I know some of you wanted me to post when I had switched over to Vista fulltime at home and unfortunately I still haven’t. My blocking issue is that there are problems with my ATI x700 video card playing back ATSC content. Hopefully we’ll get that fixed soon, because I can’t live without my HD!

Keep up the good work posting in the beta newsgroups. We’re pushing to get more program managers from eHome in there posting and responding to questions, but it’s hard given how busy we are trying to get Vista ready for you.

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Not that I encourage hacking MCE 2005 to apply themes, but our new theme can’t be that disliked if people are creating themes for MCE 2005 to make it look like our Windows Vista version :) (via ChrisL).

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Paul Thurott is out with his latest Windows Vista review and spends a good portion of the article talking about Media Center. From, Windows Vista February 2006 CTP (Build 5308/5342) Review, Part 5: Where Vista Fails:

In Windows Vista, Microsoft has irrevocably broken Media Center. It’s a horrid update to a wonderful bit of software, an ugly stepchild of beautiful parents. It’s so bad, I don’t even know where to start.

Now where do I start with my rebuttal? :)

First, the color scheme, it’s not final. Don’t get too hung up on look and feel and fit and finish in the early CTP builds.

Second, the new start menu navigation model. We debate a lot internally about what’s changing and whether the changes are for the better or for the worse; this new start menu rarely comes under fire. Why? Because this new start menu enables users to get to areas of the product much faster than the old model of having a home page and then home pages for each experience. I won’t spend the time walking through this now, but will in a later post.

Third, the horizontal galleries. This topic too warrants its own blog post. In short, we’re making a big bet on users having 16×9 displays. As such we’ve designed an interface, that is in our opinion, optimized for wide screen resolutions. Personally, I’m undecided about whether I like the change or not. Originally I was adamantly opposed to it, but it’s growing on me :).

Fourth, remote controls. Yes, we have new remote controls coming. If you were at CES 2006 they were in use at our booths.

Fifth, changing the interface. Yes, we’re changing the interface, and existing users will have to spend some time getting aquainted with the new interface. But given our new distribution strategy of bundling Media Center with Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate, Media Center will go out to orders of magnitude more users; new users. Users who have never used Media Center before. Users who likely aren’t going to care that we’ve changed the interface.

Sixth, WMP. I’m glad to hear Paul likes the changes to WMP. I also like the changes and think it’s a big improvement from WMP 10. But, I think WMP still has a lot of room to grow in terms of a simple user experience. And I totally agree with Paul that we need to work harder at providing thoughtful transitions between 2′ applications like WMP, PIX, the Windows Shell, and their 10′ equivalents in Media Center.

What are your thoughts on the changes? Have you installed build 5342? What do you think?

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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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