Windows Media Center’s New Pictures + Videos Features in Windows 7

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Windows Media Center Team here at Microsoft and shoot some videos of the new features that are currently in the Windows 7 Beta. I’m a fairly heavy user of Windows Media Center and know many of our readers are too. This post highlights many of the the changes and new features that people can enjoy for themselves as they try out the Windows 7 Beta.

In the first of several videos I shot, Windows Media Center Program Manager Noah Spitzer-Williams takes us through the new Pictures + Videos features in Windows Media Center.


Windows Media Center Picture and Videos Features in the Windows 7 Beta

In the above video, Noah demos the following new Windows Media Center features and changes in Windows 7 (in the order of appearance in the video) to the Pictures + Videos experience:

  • Changes to the way videos are displayed in Video Library to include Thumbnails AND Names for each video.
  • Support for H.264 Video - no 3rd party codecs are required to play H.264 content.
  • Video Play-All Option (think of it as a “Video Slide Show”) with ability to navigate between each video.
  • Developers can take advantage of the new Import API for Windows Portable Devices. The new API enables photos AND videos from portable devices to be imported directly within Windows Media Center.
  • Ability to create Slide Shows (new Slide Show pivot) with your pictures and can contain pictures or music or both.
  • New On-screen Keyboard (Touch-enabled).
  • Improved Rating Controls within Windows Media Center UI.
  • New Ratings Pivot for quick access to your favorite content.
  • Play Favorites feature with new Slide Show style.
  • Auto Slide Show feature acts as a screensaver for Windows Media Center.

You may have caught PowerPlaylist in the Windows Media Center menu in the video. PowerPlaylist is an application originally released by the Windows Media Center Team for Windows Vista and can be downloaded here via CodePlex. The Windows Media Center Team is revising PowerPlaylist for Windows 7 and an early copy was installed on the PC running the Windows 7 Beta in the video. They plan to release an updated version to CodePlex soon. I’ll be covering that soon as well.

Expect more videos to follow shortly!

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Comments

  1. Tommo Chapman
    Posted on: February 21, 2009 at 2:46AM  

    I read "touch," "API," and "screensaver."

    5 stars.

  2. 7flavor
    Posted on: February 21, 2009 at 3:16AM  

    Some feature requests:

    - DVB-C QAM support

    - Backport WTV read/playback support to XPMCE, Vista, H.264 to Vista

    - Extender that works with XPMCE and Vista/7 MC

  3. hitmouse
    Posted on: February 21, 2009 at 7:02AM  

    The new features come at some cost to the regular Windows user who doesn't use Media Center.

    Because the features are integrated with Windows Media Player and also with the new Windows 7 Libraries, the simple combination of using WMP for playback and having your image files linked under the Pictures Library means that Media Player's indexer is running over your image files in addition to the Windows native indexer.

    The Media indexer does not appear to offer any material benefits for end users. Simply open the player in Library mode and it's still a long wait for it to populate the first screenful of my library contents. There are also inconsistencies on searching for file metadata between the WMP interface and the Start Menu search box. Despite the redundant but I assume built-for-purpose indexer for media files, it's slower and less-featured than the Windows indexer. (Bugs are filed for these issues, but I expect these to be resolved BY DESIGN or WON'T FIX.)

    Unfortunately there's no way of telling WMP to ignore your image files without removing them from the Pictures Library. In my own case, just playing back some MP3 files incurs the performance hit of WMP re-indexing 40K image files (on top of an equivalent order of music/video tracks). Since it's slower at finding my music/video files than v11 (and no longer tracks file moves), that's quite an overhead.

    If you're also running Windows Live Photo Gallery then you've essentially got another process labouring along with the above.

    With all these processes checking my media folders and their thumbnail databases it's no wonder that it's hard to perform simple Explorer operations like moving or deleting folders without hitting the dreaded message box saying that some process has locked that folder.

  4. mawin
    Posted on: February 21, 2009 at 7:15AM  

    i still could not figure out how can i play an internet stream on windows media centre. It can be played on windows media player - added to playlist and tried to import to windows media centre, but it never works !. Anyone knows?.

  5. someone
    Posted on: February 21, 2009 at 7:54AM  

    Please please please please add video playlists to Media Center (and the Zune software as well).

  6. anonymuos
    Posted on: February 21, 2009 at 9:47AM  

    Are there any plans to support IPTV in Media Center? Microsoft already has great investments in IPTV in the form of MediaRoom. See thegreenbutton.com/.../327390.aspx here.someone has managed to get it working.

  7. tsam314
    Posted on: February 21, 2009 at 4:08PM  

    Are there any plans for .mkv support?  There are some anime and HD shows that are in .mkv files.

  8. markm66
    Posted on: February 21, 2009 at 11:46PM  

    add podcast support or this and windows media player 12 the fact that it doesn't have it is ridiculous

  9. mollyfud
    Posted on: February 23, 2009 at 7:55AM  

    Any chance that they might support picture in picture? That is the only feature that ever makes me think of using the default program with my TV card!

  10. J.R. Raith
    Posted on: February 23, 2009 at 10:33AM  

    Why are "Videos" and "Pictures" grouped? That seems very... not similar. I keep going to "Movies" looking for my Video files until I remember that distinction, haha.

    So far, WMC7 is hot hot hot, though. I love it.

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  16. Posted by: Reaching Out to Microsoft Partners in Australia on February 23, 2009 at 8:54PM

    Great blog post on some of the new stuff in Windows Media Center in Windows 7 – will be of interest to

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