Windows Media Center makes it really easy to watch TV on Windows Vista (Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate) with a built in Guide that lets you browse TV shows and movies and schedule recordings of your favorite ones. Many PCs today come with TV functionality built in via TV cards. But not all Windows Vista PCs come equipped with TV capability. Unlike a few years ago - adding TV functionality to your PC is very easy. Let me share my experience in adding TV functionality to one of my PCs.

AMD brings TV capability to your PC through their ATI TV Wonder products. Some of their products are PC cards that must be installed inside the actual PC - and others are USB devices that can simply be plugged in to a USB port. I picked up AMD's ATI TV Wonder 600 USB TV tuner - which is Certified for Windows Vista. This small USB device lets you plug in a coaxial cable for TV capability or use an antenna for free over-the-air television - including over-the-air HDTV.

The ATI TV Wonder 600 USB has the following features:

• USB 2.0
• Hybrid TV Tuner Stick for:
• Over-the-air Digital TV / HDTV1 (ATSC)
• Over-the-air / Cable Analog TV (NTSC)
• Remote control
• Telescopic antenna to receive free-to-air TV channels
• Capture from VCRs, camcorders with the included audio/video input cable

I took some unboxing shots to share with you:

Setting up TV functionality in Windows Media Center is really easy. If you have not used Windows Media Center before, when you launch Windows Media Center for the first time it will take you through a series of steps to set everything up.

If you have used Windows Media Center before and already did Windows Media Center's initial setup - to set up TV all you need to do is go to Settings and TV and click on "Set Up TV Signal". Windows Media Center will take you through a series of screens with options to set up everything you need for watching TV.

Picking up the ATI TV Wonder 600 USB TV tuner allowed me to easily add TV functionality to my main desktop PC. I had TV functionality in a matter of just a few minutes. Since the ATI TV Wonder 600 is a USB device, I can pack the device up and take it with me and use it on my laptop as well.

Hauppauge also offers products for bringing TV onto your PC and Windows Media Center.

I plan to dive deeper in several upcoming posts in using Windows Media Center and TV functionality.

Today Windows Live SkyDrive leaves the "Beta" tag behind - introducing 5GB of storage for its users and becoming available in 35 new countries and regions. Read the Windows Live SkyDrive launch announcement from their team blog!

On top of being available to users in the United States, United Kingdom, and India, Windows Live SkyDrive is now available in the following 35 countries and regions:

Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Finland, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Turkey.

With 5GB of storage, you can store quite a bit of your photos, music, Office documents and more. Did I mention that the 5GB of storage is also free?

For those who have been beta testing Windows Live SkyDrive - with today's launch you can expect to see improvements with the backend that help improve performance on top of the increase to 5GB of storage from 1GB previously.

Here on the Windows Experience Blog, I use Windows Live SkyDrive to host the OPML files for my Microsoft Team Blogs page. Yes, the page may be a little out of date but a big update is coming very soon with a few more categories. You can download the OPML files and add them to your RSS feed reader directly from Windows Live SkyDrive. We also have a Public Folder setup on Windows Live SkyDrive for the Windows Vista Team Blog too.

You can head on over to skydrive.live.com and login with your Windows Live ID to use Windows Live SkyDrive today.

A couple of days ago, my old wireless desktop set (mouse and keyboard) had its receiver die on me. So I had to go out and grab another wireless desktop set for my PC. Microsoft offers some great wireless desktop sets but I decided to go with Logitech's Cordless Desktop S 510.

The Logitech Cordless Desktop S 510 is Certified for Windows Vista and has some great features:

• Fast 27 MHz wireless performance.
• Programmable F-Keys that can be set to open favorite applications, websites, or files.
• One-Touch Controls that let you access music, video, volume, email, and the Internet.
• Power Management lets you go longer with a low-battery light and auto-off.
• Tilt Wheel plus Zoom allows you to go side to side or in and out on photos, websites or even spreadsheets.

I took some Unboxing shots to share.

The design of the keyboard is light, thin and simple which is really great.

I see a lot of keyboards with their One-Touch Controls on the top of the keyboard - the S 510 keyboard has the One-Touch Controls on the sides. Volume (music) controls are on the right and on the left is the zoom, internet and sleep/hibernate controls.

The mouse is pretty basic but has the great Tilt Wheel plus Zoom feature that lets me scroll side-to-side instead of just up and down. This is really useful. The Wireless Receiver for the S 510 is made in semi-transparent plastic giving a really interesting effect as you can see inside to the circuit board.

Overall, I'm really happy with my decision to go with Logitech's Cordless Desktop S 510. Logitech also has a really neat website for their Certified for Windows Vista products worth checking out.

Our friends on the eHome Team (the folks responsible for Windows Media Center and other cool things) passed along that the Super Bowl ads are available in Windows Media Center through the Internet TV Beta - currently available to U.S. Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate users.

The Super Bowl ads are listed under Top Picks in Internet TV.

Click here for bigger versions of the screenshots.

I suggest checking out the Iron Man movie commercial ;-)

The above screenshots were uploaded to Windows Live Spaces using Windows Live Photo Gallery. I've set up a Windows Live Space for the Windows Experience Blog - check it out.

Donavon West, whose company LiveGadgets.net was hired by Microsoft to develop the Live Search Maps Gadget originally, has announced via LiveSide that the Live Search Maps gadget is back and available for download! This awesome gadget lets you look at traffic in many different cities. I use this gadget all the time especially when traveling up to Seattle.

Donavon says work has been done "under-the-hood" so visually the gadget won't look much different than before. He also says new cities have been added: Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, San Antonio and Toronto. New cities will automatically show up in the Live Search Maps Gadget when they are added going forward.

This gadget is a must-have for folks who commute and do quite a bit of traveling.