Over at ZDNet, I’ve just published a detailed first look at Windows Vista’s new Media Center. You can read the article here or skip straight to the image gallery.
Overall, I’m pretty impressed with Vista’s Media Center. My main misgiving is the appearance of the dreaded “Restricted Content” error message, which occasionally plagues Media Center Edition 2005. A bug in Beta 2 means you’ll see the blue screen of DRM if you connect your Vista PC to a digital monitor with a DVI cable and then try to watch a copy-protected premium cable or satellite channel.
Supposedly, this bug will be fixed in RC1. But that’s small consolation to anyone trying to use Vista Media Center on a digital display today.
Go read the whole thing and let me know what you think.
6 comments ↓
The screenshot gallery gives a nice overview, but what it essentially says to me is: “Vista MCE is virtually the same as MCE 2005, except for a new horizontal layout”. I didnt’ see very much new in there.
And, I wonder how you scroll pages horizontally? Hopefully not with the “Page DOWN” button on the remote
You scroll using the right and left arrow buttons on the remote. You can also use Page Up and Page Down if you want, but that’s not the primary mode of navigation.
So, I guess my HP and Xbox extenders are about to prove worthless. I was really hoping to continue to be able to use these for the kids in the basement and the garage. Maybe there will be some option, but it doesn’t sound good.
Any word on Picture-In-Picture? What about the ability to watch television and send music to my stereo?
What about support for the curent Portable Media Center devices? The current method is ‘clunky’ at best. It takes as long to convert the files for use on the PMC as it does to actually watch them. The ability to somewhat easily dump 10+ hours of cartoons to the PMC would be incredible for long car trips with the kids.
Thanks.
Aaron:
PIP, not in the Vista timeframe.
Watch tv and send music to my stereo.. you can do this if your stereo is a Windows Media Connect client..
PMCs, there are some improvements with Media Player 11, ymmv. Also new PMCs being released… I’ve mentioned a couple of them here..
No PIP really sucks. Big time. That’s one of the main points on having 2 or 3 HDTV tuners in your HTPC (besides being able to record 2 or 3 shows at once). MS should really reconsider this if they want to really make a splash.
I don’t like the guide. I feel all guides should have a little window to show the picture the channel is currently on so you can still watch TV while browsing the guide. Do you at least hear the aduio that the channel is on when browsing the guide?
It also sucks that you need a media connector to watch TV and listen to music through your stereo (ie, do 2 things at once). What’s the point of having a HTPC? Also, if you game, I could see that as a nice feature as well (game and listen to music). Stupid MS.
Sorry, wanted to say great review as well! Loved the photo gallery.
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