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Mar30
Media Center Changes in Build 7068
While the changes are slight, there are a few things I’ve noticed since installing Windows 7 build 7068 over the weekend. Nothing major and in fact, it took me a bit to notice but there are a few things worth noting.
It’s worth noting first off that the core of everything is the same. After setting up live TV, recording storage and whatnot nothing major has been changed. You’re going to see the same setup processes as before. While there are of course some things that we all wanted MS to add, there aren’t enough changes within MCE to make it a totally different experience. It seems that everything is really just cosmetic.
First is the splash screen when you start Media Center. The logo fills the screen now and does a very fancy pull back which looks really nice. It doesn’t take any longer than the original screen but does add some flair.
The next thing I noticed while going through the setup process was that the drill down sound has changed. While it’s impossible to describe, I will say that it seems like a softer sound. I don’t know if you’ll understand what I mean but that’s the best way to describe it. This along with the splash screen are the only two sound changes I’ve noticed so far. All other sounds within the UI seem unchanged.
I’ve also noticed animation changes to the menus. This is most apparent when backing out to the main menu. When you back out from say, recorded TV, the main menu now seems to fall in from the top of the screen. It’s a slight change: it doesn’t scroll down or anything. Again, this is really a small change but one that is noticeable and adds a bit more flair to the presentation.
The most notable change seen so far is the speed of the UI on extenders. While still slower than using the local machine (something that will probably always be that way) it’s much faster now. While running build 7000 there were times that it was quite frustrating waiting for things to move both on the Xbox 360 and the Linksys DMA-2100. This is no longer the case. Both extenders are very responsive to the commands I throw at them. How much of this has to do with recent issues I was having and how much has to do with the new build is hard to tell but I don’t recall the UIs on these extenders ever being this fast.
The one thing I am frustrated with is the fact that it still seems that the Xbox 360 has issues with playing digital audio with WTV and AVI files. WMVs that I have play fine. Also, these files seem to play just fine on the local PC. Hopefully this is something that MS is looking into and will be able to fix before RTR. I really want to kill my cable but with HD recordings not playing properly, it makes it a bit harder.
Overall it seems as though MS has worked to dress up the Media Center UI as well as speed the whole system up. I wouldn’t quite call it a finished product but I think it’s getting there. The feature set is probably there so I doubt we’ll see more functionality, but the changes they’ve made since build 7000 are certainly nice even if they don’t actually add anything.
I’ll be continuing to play with build 7068 and will of course report anything I find.
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