Checking Out Windows Media Center in Windows 7

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://blog.retrosight.com/WindowsMediaCenterInThePDCBuildOfWindows7.aspx' target='_blank'>http://blog.retrosight.com/WindowsM...OfWindows7.aspx</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"If you are attending the 2008 Professional Developers Conference you received a pre-beta Windows 7 build today (6801) which contains many features the Windows Media Center team has been developing over the past year. It's my pleasure to take a few minutes to outline some of these new features for you. If you install this build do keep in mind it's considered an &lsquo;Alpha' experience meaning some features may not be polished or work quite as well as they will in the final product AND things may change (mostly for the better we hope) between now and beta and RTM. So let's jump right in..."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1225312302.usr1.jpg" border="1" /></p><p>Microsoft employee Charlie Owen has published a bunch of screen shots from the Windows Media Center interface inside Windows 7. Lots of improvements are shown, but the one that really caught my attention was native h.264 support, including Media Center Extenders. Finally, using h.264 inside a Microsoft ecosystem won't be quite so frustrating. There's some good stuff here!</p>

[Stinger]

Any hints on better AAC support too? Currently, my .aac files play but I don't get any meta data or album art. It's very frustrating and I'm certainly not going to spend an entire weekend re-ripping my music collection.

[Felix Torres]

Lots of improvements are shown, but the one that really caught my attention was native h.264 support, including Media Center Extenders.


Definitely got mine.
Question to forward to your contacts, if you will: does the H.264 support in Media Center mean the Hauppage HD PVR will work as a "tuner" device?

A yes would be greatly appreciated. ;)

[Jason Dunn]

Any hints on better AAC support too?

Yeah, in my other post I mention AAC will be natively supported. And hopefully, that's GOOD native support. :)