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Permalink to this day Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Today at the Microsoft PDC keynote in Los Angeles, during the Jim Allchin keynote, Darryn Dieken, group program manager for Avalon demo'd an experimental Netflix application built on Avalon using Netflix's pre-existing RSS feeds. The application was built by the design firm Rezn8 with design direction from two of us on the Media Center team.

The most compelling aspect of this demo (because the North Face one kicked ass visually) was the breadth of devices we were able to target. For instance the application was shown running on:

  • A regular desktop PC
  • A tablet, actually the new Gateway CX200, the first widescreen tablet
  • A Media Center
  • A mobile device, the new HTC Universal

And if you looked closely each device rendered the application differently. For instance the desktop and tablet versions had a tan background with and showed two to three rows of content depending on screen resolution and orientation, while the Media Center version showed one row of content, had a background and colors optimized for display on a TV and the controls were laid out differently so that they were optimized for navigation with a remote control. Here's a screenshot of the Media Center version:

While the application running on the HTC Universal wasn't an Avalon application, in the future it will be easy to build applications like that using it.
1:59:17 PM  Permalink to this item []


© Copyright 2005 Matt Goyer.
I work at Microsoft in the eHome division on the Windows XP Media Center Edition team as a Program Manager.

Disclaimer: The posts on this weblog are provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

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Updated: 10/3/2005; 8:35:40 PM.