When the final version of Windows Vista was released to businesses last year, the Windows Media Center application was missing several third party applications which were commonly found under Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. Favorites like MTV’s Overdrive and VH1′s VSpot were nowhere to be found during the initial launch.

Now as we head towards the consumer launch of Windows Vista, these components and applications are finally falling into place – literally appearing overnight like magic! Many early Vista adopters have noticed how new menu items and applications have literally appeared out of nowhere – with no trace of this showing up within Windows Update either. (Makes us think that much of this content was actually disabled until a set point in time).

As there have been a wealth of new additions made available to Vista’s Media Center application since our initial review in November, I thought it would be nice to add an additional article specifically for these new changes.

Everything starts with the “Online Media” section under the main menu of Media Center. Up until recently, the “Online Media” section only listed the “program library” sub menu. If you clicked into that category, you’d find that the only applications available to Media Center at that point in time were games.

If you look at the Online Media section now, you’ll find a new sub menu item entitled “explore.”

Selecting that option brings up the following screen.

The top row of menu selections include: “Showcase”, “TV + Movies”, “Music + Radio”, “News + Sports”.  These menu selections bring up several third party applications. Here’s the application rollout thus far for each major category outside of “Showcase”. (Showcase highlights the different third party applets).

TV + Movies:

TV + Movies currently offers the following applications:

  • Clips from various shows including Discovery Channels’ Dirty Jobs, Animal Planet’s Animal Cops, TLC’s Beyond the Bull, TLC’s What Not To Wear, Travel Channel’s Made in America, Discovery Channel’s Bebuilt the Human Body Shop, The Science Channel’s Discoveries This Week, The Science Channel’s How It’s Made, and The Home Channel’s Tool Belt Diva.

This Discovery Channel applet appears to be in it’s infancy thus far as each show only has a single preview video. However, you can imagine the Discovery Channel using this as a way to propel users to view more of their shows (although you won’t need to convince me to watch Dirty Jobs since that’s one of my favorite shows on TV). Here’s hoping that Discovery indeed adds more content than this in the future.

  • MSN TV Today

MSN TV provides short news bursts to users in News, Weather, Business, and Money and Investing. Nothing too fancy thus far but look for more enhancements down the road.

 

  • Movielink – which allows you to purchase or rent movies.

The Movielink applet allows you to directly connect to their service which allows users to  purchase or rent movies directly onliine. Movies can be purchased for $19.99 while rentals go for $4.99. The application allows you to view trailers, browse categories, view your cart and your current downloads.

Here’s a snapshot of Little Miss Sunshine:

 

  • Yahoo! My Channel application which allows you to view movie trailers, news, and more from within Media Center

The Yahoo! My Channel application is very similar in concept to the MSN TV one mentioned above. You can view all sorts of content available through Yahoo with what appears to be a greater emphasis on online video content. You can sign in with your Yahoo account to get further personalizations to your content.

Yahoo! content categories include News Segments, Movie Trailers, Documentaries, and Entertainment

  • MotherLoad application from Comedy Central letting you view favorite shows, original series, etc

Comedy Central’s MotherLoad application has a similar format to the MTV and VH1 applications found within the Music section. You can view clips from various Comedy Central shows including the Colbert Report (how awesome is that?)

 

  • TVTonic application allows you to subscribe to music videos and Internet TV

When you select the TVTonic section, you’ll be prompted to install their application. TVTonic’s Internet Channel features:

  • Downloading in the background
  • QuickTime compatiblity
  • RSS video feeds support

Music + Radios:

The “Music + Radios” section brings back several applications previously found under Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 but also introduces several new applets. Here’s what you’ll find:

  • Napster

Here’s what Napster’s application looks like the very first time you select it. If you’re not a Napster member, you can enroll into it for a 7 day free trial (after which you’d pay only $9.95 a month for access to over 1 million tracks). The Napster application will give you ways to find your artists, albums, and tracks and download directly to your PC.

  • Live 365 Internet Radio

Live 365 singular goal is to provide you access to hundreds of Internet Radio stations. There’s also a VIP paid subscription service which allows you to gain access to hundreds of VIP only stations and commercial free stations.

 

  • mtvU

mtvU is a carryover from Windows XP Media Center 2005 Edition UR2.  From this application, you’ll gain access to what’s hot in the university and campus music world.

  • XM Radio Online

If you’re an XM Radio subscriber, then you’ll absolutely love this application. XM Radio Online gives XM Radio subscribers the ability to access all of XM’s commercial free music channels all from the comfort of Windows Media Center.

  • AOL Radio with XM

When you select the AOL Radio with XM section, you’ll be prompted to install an ActiveX control.

Once you’ve installed it, you’ll see menu items for AOL Radio with XM, AOL Music on Demand, AOL Pictures, and AOL Video.

The AOL Radio with XM menu item is probably the most interesting category in my opinion. Why? You get access to all sorts of XM radio content for free! Under the XM Satellite Radio menu item, you’ll be able to select various XM channe’s including the XM HitList, XM 70′s, XM 80′s etc. This is seriously very cool if you’re into using Media Center as a way to listen to music. All you need to do to gain access to this service is log in with your AIM account. You can even create station presets so you don’t need to keep searching for them. There’s potential here folks!

You also get access to various other free AOL services like AOL Pictures, AOL Videos etc.

  • MTV Overdrive

Nothing’s changed with MTV Overdrive’s application under Windows Vista. You get access to clips from various MTV shows as well as on demand access to music videos from various artists.

  • NPR Talk

The NPR Talk application gives you access to various NPR content split up into various categories such as “Morning Edition”, “All Things Considered”, and “Talk of the Nation”. You can read news blurbs and select audio clips to listen all from the comfort of your PC.

  • VH1′s VSpot

VH1′s VSpot is just like MTV’s Overdrive application – except focused on VH1. I’m hooked on Hogan Knows Best clips folks..

News + Sports:

Here’s News+Sports which is a bit sparse at the moment. The only application is NPR News which we just mentioned above.

Pictures:

 

Here’s the Pictures section which includes:

  • AOL Pictures

When you select AOL Pictures, you get sent back into the same AOL application we showed earlier. In order to actually go into AOL Pictures, you need to sign into your AIM account.

Once you’ve signed in, you’ll have access to all of your photo album content on AOL Pictures, access to images sent by others, and have access to pictures on your PC.

  • Yahoo! Pictures

Yahoo! Photos gives you access to their onilne photo service. All you need to do is sign in with your Yahoo! account.

Once signed in, you have access to all of your online photo albums, shared albums, photo settings etc.

You can also access your content by other means

While you can certainly access all of this great stuff via the “Online Media” section of the Media Center UI, you can also access the content through the various menu categories within Media Center.

Under TV+Movies, you now have a new button to the left of “recorded TV” called “more tv” which brings up the same third party applications under TV.

Under the Music menu, there’s a “more music” button to the left of the “Music Library” button.

Within the Pictures+Videos section, you’ll find the “more pictures” button.. and I think you’re getting the big picture now eh?

But wait! There’s also a new “Sports” section!

Think that’s it? Well not quite folks. Microsoft also quietly added a new main menu category called “Sports”. It’s a curious addition actually since “Sports” doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the main menu items. Consider this – up until this point, the main menu has been about the different forms of multimedia available on a computer – including TV, Videos, Pictures, Online Content and of course, Music. Now Microsoft changes things up and adds “Sports” to the list which is cross functional in nature.

When you hover over the Sports menu item, you have the following buttons to choose from:

  • More Sports

The “more sports” button will bring you to the “News+sports” section of the Online Media page within Media Center. Right now there’s only NPR news in this category.

  • On Now

“On Now” is a pretty interesting new feature for Media Center. From this centralized interface, you’ll be able to see all of the sports content that is currently available through your Media Center system. Media Center scours your guide listings and filters out everything but sports related content. Thus you sports buffs can stricly see what’s on right now in Sports. The bottom portion of the screem shows a sports news ticker provided by Fox Sports Stats.

  • On Later

“On Later” is exactly that – it shows you the various sporting events that will be on later – broken down into the various sport categories such as the NBA, NCAABB, etc.

  • Scores

If you want to know what the latest scores are and you’re sick of waiting for your team to show up in SportsCenter, then check out the  “Scores” section. From  here you can see all the latest scores in various sporting categories.

  • Players

Finally, for all of you fantasy sports fanatics, Microsoft has added a new “players” section which allows you to track how your favorite players are doing.

You simply find the players in the sporting category you care about and add them to your list. Here I’ve addded Carlos Delgado and David Wright from the NY Mets.

 

That’s it for now! You can also read our initial look at Media Center under Windows Vista final here on our site. The only pieces left for us to look at is the integration of Windows SideShow and CableCARD support to Media Center. Definitely an exciting time for Media Center fans!

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