Happy Tuesday! Chris Lanier is a great source for Media Center information. He posted this last week http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/archive/2009/09/03/1720490.aspx

I've been so busy that I almost missed it!

I've complained in the past about CableCards and the DRM that ensues: http://www.peterf.net/blog/2008/10/10/WhyIsCableCardDRMBad.aspx

Chris's information comes in two flavors:
A: Next firmware will support SDV (switched digital video)
B: Next firmware will support relaxed DRM on specific channels

Now while nothing is final until I see it on my tuners and working, this is a bright ray of sunshine coming for those of us in this deep hole. By "us", I mean the early adopters that knew they could get screwed at any moment since there was no public roadmap on how to handle different cable TV specifications.

What does this mean?

• Current ATI DCT owners will not get left behind as their Cable Operator moves to SDV
• Many current owners will be able to get the same channels as their Tivo/Cable operator box
  
• All recordings will no longer be laced with DRM (only recordings that are requested to have DRM will be laced)
• Opens a window for DCT users to watch TV episodes on other computers since the extender model was the only way to watch DCT DRM laced shows previously. You will be able to watch DRM-less recordings on other computers

I expect all of this to be Windows 7 only. Always good to support Vista, but I won't complain.

The above photo is a user created gif to obviously explain the difference. See the originals here: http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/25/microsoft-sucks-at-photoshop/

Engadget thinks Microsoft sucks at Photoshop. I think they did a pretty good job. Just a bit tasteless. The offending site has been modified to reflect the original

http://free.avg.com/

AVG now supports Windows 7. I tried looking through their site for a changelog/blog. But they're latest news from July doesn't mention. All of a sudden their site mentions Windows 7 support when a search for it previously returned zero results

So far it is working well. Glad to have it back on my machine!

This is by no means a full review of Windows 7. I was beta testing for a while, and now I have my hands on the RTM (release to manufacturing). Naturally, I find a few more bugs in the release. They'll all be submitted soon via MS Connect.

First off, my install went smoothly. The hardware is around 1.5 years old with a new graphics card and hard drive. On first boot, my HomeGroup was found from my laptop running build 7100. Very impressive.

My raid array was found with no issues. I actually felt that I did not need to install any drivers to boost obvious performance. But being the nerd I am, I naturally hit the graphics driver first from Nvidia.




My only issues with tools like Nvidia's control panel are that Microsoft should be stepping up to the plate and integrating these kind of tools. It will be much easier for debugging when people are running raw drivers and no extra tools. I bet support staff would love that also. Bravo Nvidia for giving me an easy way to check my HDCP link!

Here is the kicker. I installed the Nvidia driver and it didn't require a reboot!?!?!?!??!! That shocked me something fierce.





Nothing really new here in the Performance control panel. Just higher numbers are possible.




Since Windows XP, I have always moved my personal documents to a separate HDD. It makes OS reinstalls a piece of cake. Things get a little more interesting by having setup. But I have all my data in a folder structure I've had in place for a while, so no biggie there for me.






MMmmm. Media Center.The main reason for this install. Nice marketing info there MS.... We continue...




I naturally go for the custom setup.




I'm not going to bore you with too many aimless screen shots. Here I am entering TV setup
For those familiar with TVPack and it's issues, you will love this. It is automatically installing PlayReady for you.




My CableCards are found (2x). Nothing new




Guide setup. Nothing new.







Display setup offers nothing new: just the same old confusion. If I select TV, I will fall victim to the interface "underzooming" to prepare for the overscan that doesn't exist on my TV. I can go on for a while on this topic.



Here is the new guide. Nothing too new. Nice options for "right clicking" and being able to change channel info. This was first introduced in Vista's TV Pack



This is the new "Start" screen. It is organized a little better. Movies is something I plan on playing with more. I think there is a lot of wasted space on the today screen. I wouldn't mind seeing some things moved around. If I scroll all the way up to the top, I can only see one item. Huge space waste. Take a hint from the new home screen on Windows Mobile 6.5.



I tried searching for showings, but whoops! No guide to search from? But I just looked at the guide. Was it not downloaded all the way? I went down to the Media Center tray icon to see what info is available. Under TV Pack (and possibly non-TV Pack), I could see what percentage of the guide was downloaded.

At this point, since I couldn't do anything useful, I shut down. The next day I turned it on, came back a while later, and the search worked. I'd love to see some more robust error messages here with some user options to intervene.



Here I am setting up my series to record. Unfortunately, the search offers nothing new except in the program data.
But in the screenshot listed above, there is a neat little window that explains what tv show I searched for. Ohh... look at that. Why are there HD and non-HD versions listed? This is due to my cable company having duplicate channels. I will later have to go through and delete these duplicate analog stations.

I would really appreciate a built in tool, possibly automatic when the guide is getting setup, to automatically swap and delete channels. Example: I want my channel 2 to be HD

Also, this screen's 'tabs' at the top are confusing. The screenshot above shows the default view. If I didn't see those arrows hiding in the corner, I would have never known that there was additional information available.

I had to fish around in the menus to find the options for series recording. A step back there. But the same options when I found them.




Bug: Here comes a bug. I wanted to search for "Law & Order". Searching for "Law" gets me where I need, but I decided to type "&" to refine my search results.




Boom, no results. I would qualify this as a bug. Without understanding how they're searching, I'll throw out a guess that & is jacking with their search parameters.




I decided to play with Internet TV again. After this step, I had multiple Internet TVs listed on the Start page. One listed as beta, one not.




Sweet Arrested Development! Wait.... I'm searching for series, but why am I getting individual seasons? I'd like to see all Arrested Development seasons listed under a single show name.




As I was getting ready to lay down and watch an episode of Arrested Development, I was met with "Acts". Not quite sure what I'm expected to do with them. They're all out of order anyway! I left, and have not returned yet to TV Series


What I really did enjoy was the Viral videos! This is such a great way to waste time. I did this until I fell asleep.




Bug: Every time I put in a USB flash drive or SD card, Windows pop up always shows up behind other windows. Rather annoying. Don't pop anything up if I can't use it. I'd rather go hunt through "computer" if I have to click extra times.

IE8- Someone needs to put their foot down and redo the version system. Here is my recommendation
IE6= IE6
IE6.1= IE7
IE6.2= IE8

So, IE6.2 is a good upgrade from 6.1. It adds a few new features, but overall gives me nothing too new. Read more on what my thoughts are on IE8 .


Bug: Every time I restore or maximize Media Center, my cursor gets centered on the screen. This is rather annoying when my cursor goes flying across the screen and I have to hunt it down again.



Conclusion:
Very exciting. I love the new desktop experience. I skipped over many things like this because they've been covered in great detail by others

When I began writing this blog post, I wasn't expecting to finish with 3 bugs and a few annoying rants about issues. But unfortunately, that's how I roll.

This was written to specifically lay out my first RTM impressions, more to come soon!

Peter

Well, we've reached that time where we no longer have to hear about leaked betas, release candidates, or early fake RTMs of Windows 7.

It is done, completed, and been shipped to manufacturers (and people who have better connections than me). At this point, they're making images and testing the final version on their machines. And yes, we can all look forward to lots of crapware being installed on it: "Windows has a wireless manager, try the Dell wireless manager!" "You didn't want to use Windows power management, here is our custom tool" "You wanted to be reminded every boot about hp's printer driver update, right?"

We've all been hearing plenty about Windows 7.

"It's Vista with less suck"
"It's the Vista we should've had"

Okay, I said most of those things. I wasn't a Vista hater, but it would've been nice to get some of those features earlier on. I'm personally looking forward to it for all my uses.

1) Laptop:Will run smoother, new window management make touch pad usage easier
2) Media Center: The features I gained in Vista's Media Center TV Pack will be integrated into Windows 7. (Not looking forward to having to reset my DRM on my CableCard recordings)
3) Vehicle: I've been running XP due to its low resources and not wanting to bet on drivers for Vista. It's been misbehaving lately and could use a more modern OS. I'm ready to make the jump there

Yes, I'm saying XP is not modern. It's OLD: 2002 if my my memory serves me right. Honestly, it was beefed up Windows 2000 to support graphics and a better GUI.

We're 3 months away from when it will hit the shelves. It's a little too long for me! I miss my MSDN account......

Comcast is here to please again. Almost a month after sucking in new customers with the OTA Digital TV Transition, Comcast is changing customers (at least in my area) to all digital.  Currently, stations like ABC/CBS/NBC/FOX that broadcast in digital only, are down converted to analog for cable customer use. Other stations on cable are also broadcast in analog.

This is all changing. I have mixed feelings. Overall, my negative feelings reside with the timing. Almost exactly a month after the OTA transition, they're announcing the change?

Their FAQ page is horribly misleading.

Are there any ways that I can make my old television set work?

If you subscribe to Comcast cable, we will take care of you.  You won't need to worry about getting a new TV if you subscribe to a Comcast cable package. 

Comcast will offer some converter boxes, but that doesn't plug the hole. I have a friend that has 5-6 TVs in his house. Comcast won't give him enough converters. What if someone had OTA TV and decided to research pay TV. Cable suckered them in with no need for boxes and the customer avoided DirecTV/Dish. Whoops, well don't worry about that, you wanted to pay for their DVR anyway, right?

Onto the positive. If comcast broadcasts one digital station, theoretically, my HDTV will display in full resolution. Anyone who doesn't have an HDTV should view the same signal, but at a lower resolution.

I have noticed on a comcast Digital Tuner box that it will display black on a low res TV that is tuned to a HD channel.

Time will tell how it plays out, anyone else have any additional info on this?

Finally, the day has come. Analog TV is gone, except for LPTV. Totally makes sense right. Force everyone to change to digital except for those local low power stations. I don't think I've ever tuned into one or have the need to. I'm sure anyone who tunes to LPTV still made the digital transition since everything else changed. Good job FCC. Way to go all the way and fall an inch short.

For the sake of keeping the rest of this post sane, we're going to assume analog tv is gone. Now what do we do? Well for those who escaped the grasp of the cable companies, they're on the all digital bandwagon. TV is broadcast up to 1080i without having to buy a digital package. Yes this is a jab at the cable companies. Cable companies usually give you the broadcast channels over HD for free, but don't market it.

On top of that, cable isn't affected by the DTV transition. The digital signals they get from the broadcast companies will be downconverted to analog. Honestly, I feel that's an unfair advantage. A) get a digital box for OTA DTV from a company you've never heard of (and priced just barely above $40 to get the full value of the government voucher program) or B) subscribe to cable tv.

I get yelled at when I bring that up. If cable companies were forced to go digital, everyone would be forced to get a box. My response: OK!  For YEARS cable companies have been screwing with consumers. Force them to get boxes for more channels. Since you screwed customers by creating a box monopoly, cablecards were brought to life. I personally invested around 1000 USD in a CableCard system. How many United States citizens to you know who have cable and do not have a digital box from their cable provider in their home? Very few! Sure there are some that would get screwed by a digital cable transition, but much less than the OTA digital transition.

On top of that, since they're paying subscribers, there already is a support network setup.

Yes, I've gone on another rant, but isn't that what you've come to except by this point?

Windows 7 E will be the only version to ship to Europe. Similar to versions of XP that shipped to Europe without Windows Media Player, the EU ruled in an antitrust case that MS has an unfair advantage with IE being shipped with Windows.

OEMs that will ship machines with Windows 7 will have the opportunity to install whatever browser they would like to. Pretty much anything is fair game as long as Microsoft is not making the decision.

So if a consumer buys a copy of Windows 7 off of the shelf in Europe, they will have NO BROWSER. So how do you get a browser? You'll need to bust into an FTP site or get it via removable media.

Let's play make believe...

But wait... what FTP client are you using? Microsoft bundles in an FTP client. Clearly this is unfair. Microsoft should remove that to allow 3rd parties a fair shot.

Since you forgot to download your browser installer before you wiped your machine, you'll be getting impatient calling your neighbor to come over with IE8/Firefox/Opera/Chrome. You bust open solitaire. Isn't this unfair also? There are many companies out there that sell games for Windows. Clearly this is also unfair. Microsoft needs to delete solitaire and all other games from the computer.

You want to listen to some music instead. Whoops, sorry, Windows Media Player shouldn't be their either. Go download Winamp or WMP after you get a browser.

You finally get some audio playback software. You don't have your sound card drivers installed yet, so you decide to get nerdy and bust out some bluetooth headphones since the drivers and bluetooth stack were installed by default for your setup. But wait, there are a few companies that sell their own bluetooth stack. Microsoft had better rip that out too and force you to download your favorite choice.

I believe in a free market. If Microsoft actually blocks the installation of 3rd party software, by all means: burn them at the stake!! But as a developer, I use MSDN constantly. As one of many sources Microsoft opens up to the world, they want you to program for their platform! Sure, they'd love to see you use IE, but you don't see them crashing the Firefox installer.

If a 3rd party company like Mozilla or Google wants to compete, a customer will see their choices. Customers will make a decision. If the EU was being truely fair, they would force all operating systems ( all flavors of linux, windows, OSX, etc ) to not bundles internet browsers. It would be a level playing field. I'm assuming the decision passed down by the EU was meant to protect uneducated consumers, won't these customers be faced with a different decision? Buy a computer potentially without an internet browser... or buy that cute green ecofriendly hippie noncorporate machine Apple that has their own Safari browser ready to go?


edit: forgot to add source http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/06/windows-7-to-be-shipped-in-europe-sans-internet-explorer.ars

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,525835,00.html

Real Life "Final Destination"

image source wikipedia