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

Posted by:
Brandon LeBlanc
10:54 PM Friday
Feb 20, 2009
33 Comments

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!

Comments

beanbag

Posted on: March 03, 2009 at 12:05PM
Windows 7 is a truly fantastic OS. I've been used the beta (build 7000), on my Acer netbook for the past couple of months with little or no problems and I'm quite convinced I'll be purchasing my licenses once it's released.

I am however massively disappointed with MCE 7.

I decided to give it a shot on my MCE system at home. I'm currently running Vista MCE with little or no problems and hoped to get the same from Windows 7. Unfortunately I had so many driver issues I had to give up.

Now this isn't a major disaster since Windows 7 is still in development, however one thing I was sincerely hoping Microsoft would fix would be the picture viewer function.

This is something I've never been able to used on Vista due to one very small and annoying reason. The photos don't auto-rotate and it means we have groups of friends tilting their heads to view photos properly.

You can of course manually rotate the image but then it has to resave it causing a loss of image quality. Not likely, thank you!

Why can Microsoft not implement an auto-rotate feature based on the EXIF orientation data provided on pretty much all modern digital cameras??

It's such a simple feature to add, yet such a valuable one.

Picasa uses it, as such ACDSee, and of course Lightroom. Why can't Microsoft join the group!?!?!

It would be very interesting to get Microsoft's take on this and understand why such a rudimentary feature was not included in Windows 7 MCE.....
voyagermix

Posted on: March 03, 2009 at 7:03PM
that's ALL? you need to integrate more TO Xbox360, play FLASH, rtmp: / /, Matroska, Youtube, youtube, etc.. LIKE programs like yougle or miraWorld, you only focus on videos, photos and music but do not try to make a PLUS!, MAKE MORE pleasE!
Panagiotis

Posted on: March 06, 2009 at 6:03AM
matroska, .mov and youtube is really gona be nice in windows7. i'm really tired of trying to find and installing seperate codecs just to see a video. u need to give everything a user need out of the box. windows lost their home target for a long time but i think with windows 7 are back in the race and i hope they keep it up like this. windows are not profesional and mac for home users. both os are equal for business and home users. just try to fix the gap for the home users. only then microsoft will compete the ilife suite. compare the free iphoto with the free photo gallery. so few things on the photo gallery. where is the mp3 comvertion on wmp? itune got it. but i don't get it why to have itunes while windows provide me wmp? just fix this. ad more things and listen to ppl.

you are on good way now. just dont screw this up in future:D

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