• XBox 360 Extender support. This has been talked about a lot already. In short, full fidelity, HDTV, Extender remoting to all XBox 360s.
• DVD Changer. This was my pet feature for Emerald and you're going to get sick of hearing about it shortly. But needless to say, we now have built in support for DVD changers in MCE. Expect to see four different offerings this fall all which will support up to 200 discs (though in theory we support an arbitrary number of discs). Also, while some changers will come bundled with a PC, there will be changers available that you can add to your existing MCE system. And I know Thomas has already panned this feature, but it's the logical legal 'bridge tha gap' solution between now and the time by which we get secure managed copy, and/or true HDTV VOD. We also have a way of emulating DVD changer functionality for those of you without changers; I'll post details later this weekend.
• Away Mode. Turns off your MCE while still allowing you to record and stream to Extenders.
• Burn HDTV to DVD, burn from network shares. This is my officemate Ben's pet feature.
• 4 tuners - 2 ATSC, 2 NTSC. For all you who need to record four shows at once.
• Non-linear zoom mode
• Optimization. A new setting that restarts critical MCE processes every day.
• Lots and lots of bugs fixes. I'll post more about the bugs we fixed in the upcoming weeks

Sorry, no CableCard, and yes, it's free!

Other news:

• 4 Million MCE shipped since launch
• 20 new countries, 11 new languages
• More than 2 million since May
• 43% of PCs sold at retail in August were MCE
• Lots of people are shipping MCE - over 130 OEMs, 7000 system builders

10:20:35 PM   []

Partners now Live in Online Spotlight

• MTV Overdrive. Overdrive is MTV’s broadband network, delivering the hottest video content to Media Center PCs. Overdrive provides access to live performances, music videos, artist interviews, never-before-seen footage of MTV shows, the latest news, movie trailers and more. It’s all online and all on demand, now at the touch of a remote control button.
• Digital Interactive Systems Corp. (DISCover). Designed exclusively for Media Center PCs, DISCover’s My Games gives customers access to a wide range of PC games that they can digitally demo, buy and stream. Customers can view an in-depth game guide with screen shots, box art and descriptions for thousands of top games, and can purchase “boxed” games via top online retailers with the ease of a Media Center Edition remote control.
• Game xStream. Game xStream’s now-live gaming-on-demand service for Online Spotlight connects users to its extensive catalog of video game titles from leading game developers, from which they can buy and stream games instantly. Within minutes of pressing the Buy button from a Media Center Edition remote control, gamers can begin playing graphic-intensive games from publishers including Merscom LLC, Global Star Software and Encore Inc.

9:28:41 PM   []