music-wall

Windows 7 Media Center Revealed

By on October 28, 2008 in windows 7, Windows Media Center

Over in Los Angeles, attendees of Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference will today hear about the features planned for Windows 7, and receive a pre-beta version of the software for testing and feedback.

Here at WGS, we’ve had a copy of that build (Build 6801, or Milestone 3 for you build geeks) for a little while – today our NDA is lifted and we can bring you a sneak preview of some of the features planned for Windows Media Center in Windows 7.

Note: This may be subject to change – remember, this is pre-beta so there’s a lot more testing and refinement required.

So what’s new?

New Start Menu

As you can see, the Media Center Start Menu has been redesigned, bringing in a more consistent (but not exactly the same) look and feel with the Zune UX.

menu1 thumb1 Windows 7 Media Center Revealed live tv overlay thumb1 Windows 7 Media Center Revealed 

Media Center Gadget

When you install Windows 7, you’ll notice quickly that the sidebar is no more, however gadgets are still available, and in the box you’ll find a new Media Center gadget that sits on your desktop and provides one click access to your Recorded TV, and (if available in your region) Broadband TV.

gadget thumb1 Windows 7 Media Center Revealed

gadget2 thumb1 Windows 7 Media Center Revealed 

New Context Menus

Digging into the menus, you’ll see that it’s much easier to discover more information about the various media on your computer. Clicking the info button (or right clicking with your mouse) on a particular programme, song or photo brings up a new context-sensitive overlay with information and available actions for that item.

new tv info overlay thumb1 Windows 7 Media Center Revealed actions thumb1 Windows 7 Media Center Revealed

music overlay thumb1 Windows 7 Media Center Revealed

 New Guide Layout

Whilst the main guide layout hasn’t changed (but scrolls a lot more quickly) the new design interface continues through to detailed guide information.

tv guide overlay thumb1 Windows 7 Media Center Revealed

tv guide overlay 2 thumb1 Windows 7 Media Center Revealed

tv guide overlay 3 thumb1 Windows 7 Media Center Revealed

New Now Playing Menu

Whilst watching TV, a new Now Playing overlay helps you see what’s on, and get more information on those programmes.   

miniguide thumb1 Windows 7 Media Center Revealed

miniguide 2 thumb1 Windows 7 Media Center Revealed

miniguide 3 thumb1 Windows 7 Media Center Revealed

miniguide 4 thumb1 Windows 7 Media Center Revealed

miniguide 5 thumb1 Windows 7 Media Center Revealed

Music Wall

One of my favourite new features is the Music Wall – an scrolling view of all of your album artwork which displays around 15 seconds into music playback.

music wall 300x175 Windows 7 Media Center Revealed

TV Pack 2008 Inclusion

As predicted, all of the goodies given to OEMs in the Windows Media Center TV Pack 2008 will be handed over to consumers in Windows 7 – new TV standards such as DVB-S for Europe, ISDB-T and QAM are all included in box. That H.264 that was postponed from Fiji? It’s in Windows 7. icon smile Windows 7 Media Center Revealed

I’m sure there’s a whole host of additional features and improvements we’ve yet to discover, but for now, it’s clear that Windows 7 Media Center is shaping up to be a strong release, with new design providing an even more pleasant experience. Given where we are in the development cycle (and you can say this for the whole Windows 7 product right now) it is also amazingly stable and usable. 

At this point, there’s lots of conjecture as to when Windows 7 will be released – given the stability of this build, my hunch is we’ll see Windows 7 hit RTM in Summer 2009, ready for launch this time next year. It’ll be interesting to see how things develop from here.

More Info: Media Center Program Manager Charlie Owen has more over on his blog.


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About Terry Walsh

Terry Walsh is the founding editor and owner of We Got Served. Since February 2007, the site has provided detailed coverage and analysis of the emerging home server category, and has subsequently grown into a trusted outlet for digital home news and reviews.
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  • James Quintin

    Yo

    Dare I ask if H.264 support for BBC HD and native Blu-Ray is in there straight out of the box…?

    Q

  • Terry Walsh

    H.264 is enabled – not sure about Blu-Ray at this point, but don’t believe so in the M3 build.

  • Alex

    What about the file format for recorded TV? Is it .wtv or .dvr-ms? Is DVD Library support still there?

  • Terry Walsh

    DVR-MS is no more – all hail .wtv….. there’s a new Movies strip in Win 7 which provides a heap of info on Movie content.

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  • Pete

    My current VMC is an old 2.4 P4, 2GB for playing divx and mp3s. Any idea if the new version will run better with such an underwhelming setup?

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  • Gwyneth Hannaford

    So will they include support for the Direct TV HDPC-20? Many people hoped this would show up in a Vista service pack but no joy yet.

  • http://blog.retrosight.com Charlie Owen

    Terry, would you allow me to make a subtle clarification on your post? Under ‘New Miniguide’ you are actually showing the new Now Playing experience for TV playback rather than the mini guide. So, with your initial remote control button press you will get…

    Left | Right = Now Playing
    Up | Down = Mini Guide

    Charlie

  • http://www.wegotserved.co.uk Terry Walsh

    My bad, Charlie – thanks for the pointer. Relabelled the shots. Great work, btw ;-)

  • http://blog.retrosight.com Charlie Owen

    Thanks for this post — we are pretty excited about the enhancements in Windows 7 and are glad to be able to finally talk about them.

    More details over on my blog at http://blog.retrosight.com/WindowsMediaCenterInThePDCBuildOfWindows7.aspx if you care to take a look.

  • Pingback: The Next Windows Media Center...Windows 7 Media Center | My Media Center Blog

  • Steve

    Great post Terry!

  • jimb

    Does It have multi-tuner support say for DVB-T and DVB-S simultaeneously.

  • Ruald

    Hi,

    Could you say if CI modules are supported for Dvb-S/S2 in europe? I mean without any registry hacks or something.

    Regards,
    Ruald Ordelman

  • PRChohan

    And I am hoping the new version of MCE will work much better and smoother with CableCard equipped PCs. Not sure if one will have to get a new PC to get CableCard tuners. I’d hope not (just got a Vista MCE box).

  • http://www.wegotserved.co.uk Terry Walsh

    @Pete – I think it’s time you treated yourself to a new PC :)
    @jimb – that functionality was included in Fiji, so will be available in Windows 7 too
    @Ruald – no news on that one, but I share your need :-)

  • http://michaelyork.org Michael

    Please tell me there is native AVCHD support… =)

  • justme

    Any news if you can mix DVB-S and DVB-T cards in the same system. ie have two line ups?

    Any DVB-S CI support?

  • Jim Clark

    I could be wrong, but I am beginning to think that we would be better “served” by separating MC from the OS. Let it develop at its own pace instead of being tied so tightly to an OS.

    If done right, WMC could compete quite successfully with any other MC app out there. The problem is that it does not seem to be able to keep up with a rapidly changing digital world. Blu-ray and cablecard, to name just a few. The TV Pack is the ultimate example of all this. MC develop is simply hampered by to the relatively slow feature update cycle of an OS. A rapidly changing digital world dictates that a MC app needs to have the ability to quickly adapt to changing technology.

    Other than that, there are some nice interface changes in the new MC. Interface changes aside, tho, will it have the right set of features, and associated HW that works (extenders) to be able to compete against the simple cable/dish DVR? You know, that device that just works…

  • http://wegotserved.co.uk Matthew Miller

    I thought the most interesting point that Charlie made was that WMC7 would include built-in support for sharing recorded TV over the network. It should be interesting to see how this ends up fitting in with WHS…

  • Pingback: Windows 7 Media Center News from PDC - Includes h.264 Support | Windows Home Theater

  • Roland Stranneborn

    Is there any change to the display of artwork for videos ? In Vista you only get a small (250 or so) pixels thumbnail, even if you have better available. I’d look for something more like Apple TVs display of artwork, so you can actually see the covers for the video (e.g. for a DivX movie)

  • Pete

    @Terry Walsh – I know, I know. But Vista was so weak that I decided to jump ship to Apple for my last computer refresh (MacBook + VMWare = sanity).

    But hey, if I could get my hands on a Win7 beta I’d be all about a new desktop!

  • Pingback: Windows 7: GUI, multitouch, Media Center & more - SlashGear

  • Terry Walsh

    Boot Camp is your friend, Pete!

    Originally Posted By Pete@Terry Walsh – I know, I know. But Vista was so weak that I decided to jump ship to Apple for my last computer refresh (MacBook + VMWare = sanity).

    But hey, if I could get my hands on a Win7 beta I’d be all about a new desktop!

  • Shashi

    Charlie are you monitoring your blog and taking feedback on. Or is this like this is the best we can do so deal with it post? If you are monitoring it, please take on board all excellent suggetions.
    thanks

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  • Peter

    Is there support for DVB-C (with CI)?

  • Peter

    This thumbnail pic “menu1-thumb.jpg” links to the wrong hi-res pic.
    It links to “live-tv-overlay.jpg” but should have linked to “menu1.jpg”.

    And “actions-thumb.jpg” miss the link to “actions.jpg”.

  • Brian

    Any word on freesat?

  • Marc

    Originally Posted By BrianAny word on freesat?

    you can get all the freesat channels and more with the current tvpack and the hacked dll that inc itvhd when its on !!!

  • Marc

    Originally Posted By Pete@Terry Walsh – I know, I know. But Vista was so weak that I decided to jump ship to Apple for my last computer refresh (MacBook + VMWare = sanity).

    But hey, if I could get my hands on a Win7 beta I’d be all about a new desktop!

    its not hard to find the pdc build to download

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  • Dougie Fresh

    I was able to install Windows 7 Beta recently and I was very excited about checking out the new Media Center. It took about 10 minutes of using it to realize they left out one single feature that makes it unusable for me. Upon going into the calibration settings it tells me to find the calibration settings on my TELEVISION for centering and resizing. I wanted to tweak the UI for overscan since my graphics card driver has no such capabilities nor does my TV. XBMC and other media center apps I’ve tried allow you to do this but WMC has no such feature. So, no WMC for me. I wish such a simple thing had been included. The rest of Windows 7, however, looks great.