Vista MCE changes from MCE 2005 posted on Matt Goyer Blog

July 30, 2006

Matt Goyer works as a manager for Microsoft on the Media Center team and keeps a handy blog posted that is quite interesting to check out now and again. For instance, if you already have a HTPC and run MCE 2005, you may be wondering why in the heck would you want to upgrade to the upcoming Vista versions. Well, in the following quote from Mr. Goyers blog, he lists the many improvements and changes in the Vista edition over the present MCE Roll up 2 version that everyone is using.

One or two things catch my eye. For one, you can start a photo slide show from within My Music which is handy. But, a big change is, the addition of a Microsoft DVD codec. Not to mention a native DVD burning solution has been added as well!

We did add new features!

I read over and over about how we haven't actually added any new features to Media Center this time around and that there is no compelling reason to upgrade from Media Center 2005. Puzzled by this I decided to pull together a list of what's changed (not an exhaustive list by any means, we still have a few key features hidden up our sleeves):

Support for 64bit machines
You can upgrade to Windows Vista Media Center from XP
Media Center is included as part of two Windows Vista SKUs
No need to buy a Media Center. You can install yourself.
Domain join
Available worldwide in every locale that we ship Windows to (160 new locales! 15 new languages!)
More content on screen in our photos/music/videos/TV libraries Faster perf for the music library
OCUR/CableCARD support
It was very hard to use a mouse in MCE 2005. We've made some big improvements to mouse handling.
Likewise, hard to use with a touch screen before, should be better now
Run on your Tablet PC
New start menu to get you to where you want to be faster
Start photo slideshow from Music Now Playing
Now playing item on the start menu, should be more discoverable
More ways to slice and dice your music collection
New music Now Playing
Way better queue management
View photos and videos by folder or date
Mini TV guide
TV favorites/most viewed
TV categories is now discoverable
TV guide is an overlay
Easy to get to TV categories
Thumbnails in recorded TV library
PAL exhaustive channel scanning
Microsoft DVD codec
Native burning solution
Extender platform. Now any hardware manufacturer can integrate a MCX into their TV, DVD player, etc.
Tighter integration on start menu for third parties. You're no longer buried in More Programs
Windows Media Center Presentation Layer, now you can build apps that have the same fidelity as Media Center
Windows Presentation Foundation, re-use your Avalon code to build Media Center applications
Hotstart

If you look at that list I see lots of features that you've asked for over the years: 64 bit, native DVD codec, native burning, upgradability, retail availability, better development platform, etc.

If you use Media Center Edition and if you like to stay up to date, I would suggest you bookmark this gentleman's page. MCE is definitely becoming more interesting and fun multimedia interface solution for your entertainment center. Once you see the interface for television, that displays DVD style cover art for the shows and allows recording with a click, you have to admit, it makes TiVo look pretty old fashioned. Not to mention, that at least for now, the guide is "free".

An interesting comment he makes too is, you do not need
to buy a Media Center PC, you can build it yourself or even upgrade from a system running XP. (Having said that, a clean install after a thorough backup would definitely be preferable over an upgrade) Sure, you can already build your own MCE machine if you choose the correct hardware, but if we can read between the lines a bit, it seems to indicate that the fussy days may (finally) be over for Media Center Edition, which would be a real joy. At any rate, at present, upgrading to MCE from XP is not possible, no matter what hardware you are running, you must perform a clean install.

Source: Matt Goyers Blog