Welcome to The Windows Blog 

Comments

1. Christoc

   
   Posted on: October 26, 2006 at 2:39PM  

   I'm looking forward to using Vista for it's media center capabilities. I currently don't use MC because of it's lack of support for input sources. I have Digital cable, and an OTA for some HD, but couldn't get the OTA working with the cards I tried for MC. Hoping that with Vista i'll have better success.

   Also looking forward to the Zune and using it with Vista's media center capabilities.
2. bmaltais

   
   Posted on: October 26, 2006 at 3:27PM  

   Interesting post but what I would like to know is what else should we expect from Vista in relationship with the XBOX 360.  Will there be capabilities to access video files directly from the 360 Dashboard via Windows Media Connect on Vista?

   Are there any plans to add support for other codecs like Divx/Xvid?  h.264 and VC-1 will certainly be onboard for the launch of the HD-DVD drive since the 360 has to decode them to play HD DVD movies.

   Will those codecs be made available via the Vista MCE 360 Extender?  If not, why?
3. Brandon LeBlanc

   

   
   Posted on: October 26, 2006 at 5:33PM  

   bmaltais,

   Vista's relationship with the Xbox 360 is fantastic!

   You can access your photos and music video the Xbox 360 Dashboard via what they are now called "Media Sharing" (aka Windows Media Connect 3.0). It works great. I've not yet tested video using Media Sharing, so I'm unsure about streaming video in Vista to the Xbox 360 outside MCE.

   What's even better though is how great MCE works on Vista with the Xbox 360. I am streaming live TV from my MCE to my 360 with very little performance lag on the actual PC. I can be streaming TV, using Outlook and Photoshop with everything working great.

   As for the codecs question - that is a good question! ;-)
4. bmaltais

   
   Posted on: October 26, 2006 at 7:44PM  

   I have to say that I am not new to Windows Media Center and the 360 Extender.  I have converted my previous familly TV system (cable co leased SA8000 pvr) to it when I acquired my XBOX 360 on Nov 22 2005.  I never looked back since then and can't see myself moving back to the dinosaure the SA8000 pvr was.  I had tried MYTH TV before MCE but it was too unstable to be use as a PVR (mainly due to my Haupauge USB2 external capture solution).  When I installed a copy of MCE 2005 on the MYTH TV system everything worked right out of the box and was rock solid.

   One deception was to find that XVID would not play on the 360 extender.  Over the years I have converted all my family DV video collection to XVID and was not able to stream it to my extender.  So I started poking around and finally came to meet runtime360.  We both worked on making XVID/DIVX streaming acceptable on the 360 extender by transcoding it to MPEG2 and streaming it to the 360 as a standard MPEG2 file.  This finally allowed 360 owner to watch their XVID/DIVX video with the ability to pause, rewind and fast forward.

   This is far from a perfect solution.  Up until Vista 5840 the solution was no longer working under Vista Media Centre and 360 Extender.  Thanks to Microsoft the issue has been resolved in Vista build 5840 (I have been told since Connect members do not get access to this build).

   What I hope will happen is that XVID/DIVX decoding will be added to the 360 so we can finally watch those files nativelly on the console.

   If it does not happen then at least Transcode 360 will be able to fill the gap for another while.
5. someone

   
   Posted on: October 27, 2006 at 1:09AM  

   I dream that SP1 will bring native MPEG-4 encoding and support.
6. stephensuley

   
   Posted on: October 27, 2006 at 1:59AM  

   I would like very much like a Vista system to act as an extender as well as a full media center. This would be great for all the poeple with more then one computer in the house and awsome for owners of multiple laptops..streaming live tv from my desktop to laptop..ahhhhh

   see my post over at C9.

   http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=244839#244839
7. trial_lawyer

   
   Posted on: October 27, 2006 at 5:32AM  

   Will Vista Media Center Edition support Slingbox AV?
8. MarkHorridge

   
   Posted on: October 27, 2006 at 10:48AM  

   I looked at Vista with a view to anticipating the problems that Vista users might experience with the programs that we produce and sell.

   In general, I hate all change (I thought Win2k was fine), but I'd have to say that Vista seemed less bad than I feared.

   Biggest problem I noticed was the help system

   (winhlp32, HLP files) used by older programs

   does not work. So, those older programs you need to use occasionally -- the online help

   is inaccessible. To buy new versions of all those old programs would cost a lot...and for some, there are no new versions.

   Microsoft have announced that an HLP file viewer will be downloadable (it isnt yet) but they didnt say whether the viewer would allow

   you to see contect-sensitive help from within

   your legacy program.

   Afficionados will recall that Microsoft plans

   for help files have changed frequently over the years. In short, we had:

   * The HLP format used by Winhlp32

   * the CHM or HTMLhelp format

   * The HTMLhelp2 or VisStudio help format, now abandoned

   * the previous announcement that Longhorn would support the HLP format

   * the announcement of a new help format for Longhorn....now delayed till sometime in the future.

   * the announcement that Vista would NOT support the HLP format.

   So for anyone using any older programs (that use HLP help files) I'd suggest sticking with XP until 2012 or whenever the help strategy stabilizes.

   Mark Horridge
9. newscientist2000

   
   Posted on: October 28, 2006 at 12:48AM  

   Man I wish I could afford a 360, my wifes cousin and my brother both have one and all the cool media center extender stuff really makes me want to sell my Xbox and upgrade to a 360, if I traded in my old games I could probably afford one.  It's certainly cheaper than a competition, plus it has more games and is better value for the price.

   I think that as soon as my brother gets hooked on a version of ProEvolution/Winning Eleven on his 360, I will upgrade.  Because its only a matter of time before he gets hooked and ends up spending 30+ hours a week on his 360...inevitable!
10. newscientist2000

    
    Posted on: October 28, 2006 at 12:58AM  

    Looks like Wall street your making your shareholders happy

    http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061027-8094.html