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:
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!
I read "touch," "API," and "screensaver."
5 stars.
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
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.
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?.
Please please please please add video playlists to Media Center (and the Zune software as well).
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.
Are there any plans for .mkv support? There are some anime and HD shows that are in .mkv files.
add podcast support or this and windows media player 12 the fact that it doesn't have it is ridiculous
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!
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.
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.....
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!
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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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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