By popular demand, Bill Gates' last day at the office video, courtesy of Channel 10.

Bonus points if you can name all the cameos and the song he's playing on Guitar Hero. ;)

Bill's Last Day: The CES Keynote video
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I'm watching the CES 2008 keynote right now, streaming live on the web with Microsoft Silverlight at www.microsoft.com/ces.  I'm so happy they allowed the funny video with a long cast of celebs in the simulcast.  I have four streams going right now for test purposes. Kudos to the istreamplanet team for keeping up with the crushing stream load, I understand it kept rising and rising during the keynote.

Speaking of which, I'm happy that Bill just unveiled that NBC Universal has selected Silverlight exclusively for online delivery of the 29th Olympics in Beijing, PRC in partnership with MSN.  Lots of exciting stuff to come there.   I'll write more on that later.

More pictures below:

Update: If you're unfamiliar with this whole Silverlight thing, check out Andy Plessner's Beet.TV interview where we discussed Silverlight last year. For some reason that day, I opted for the Quicksilver T-shirt instead of my "Evil Monkey" shirt.  Perhaps it was partner love.

The new Microsoft at CES site is up, and it's powered by Silverlight. There are so many projects underway now it's hard to keep track of them all and this was a great one to see.   
What's more, you'll be able to watch the keynote live in-page with Silverlight or via WMP/default browser.  Take a look, spin the wheel in LV fashion and check out the latest news from Microsoft at CES.

Hope y'all enjoy the show - Sunday night @ 6:30pm

The NY Times this AM is running an article on the ongoing battle between HD DVD and Blu-Ray. Frankly I'm getting pretty tired of the whole thing.  The video quality is better - noticeably better than DVD but would I not watch a movie because it wasn't available in my format?  No. 

NetFlix subscribers are the big winner in the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray battle by remaining largely agnostic.  I continue to say, don't buy the discs- just rent for now while the market sorts out.

In the DVD War Over High Definition, Most Buyers Are Sitting It Out - New York Times

I've written here about Silverlight 1.0's capabilities to support rich media delivery with video and audio delivery and with ScottGu's update on Silverlight 2.0, I figured it's time for an update on all the goodness that is happening

When we think about Silverlight and media, we really think about content enablement - how to deliver video, audio, animation, and interactivity in a cost-effective way from creation to distribution to experience.  The teams are continuing to innovate on all three of these fronts:

Silverlight Content Creation with Expression

Just a few months ago, we released Expression Encoder 1.0, a easy to use yet powerful tool for building interactive Silverlight media content including live events and on-demand video. Encoder solves a particularly frustrating problem of how to convert files such as QT or AVI into VC-1 for delivery in Silverlight.  Live streaming supports multiple camera angles, direct connect from Silverlight and Windows Media Player clients for PC, Mac, and Mobile, and easily supports broadcasting from Windows Media Services, a feature of Windows Server.  By providing a series of templates that can be easily modified with Expression Blend, you can host your videos on any web server (Windows, Linux, Mac whatever) with simplicity. In recent months, the Expression team released a Publishing plug-in to upload video up to HD quality  with Silverlight Streaming, a freely available service by Windows Live.  There's even a plug-in for Windows Live Writer that makes it easy to publish Silverlight video in your blog.  More on that later. 

If you're interested to get started with Expression Encoder, download the free trial  and check out the How-to videos here.  And pay attention to Mix for more to come ;)

Silverlight Content Distribution with Windows Server 2008

Today, content providers have a rapidly growing number of options for delivering media on the Web.  In particular, delivering on-demand video has never been easier. The majority of sites today choose to host video on web servers, where the average user watches under half a minute of video, but downloads nearly five minutes of content.  Video consumption is exploding online and of you ascribe to The Big Internet Slowdown Deloitte Consulting and Nemertes Consulting have predicted, we're in for a big slowdown by 2010.  "Users will experience a slow, subtle degradation, so it's back to the bad old days of dial-up," says Nemertes President Johna Till Johnson. "The cool stuff that you'll want to do will be such a pain in the rear that you won't do it."

Just as we're hearing about the importance of responsible energy use, content providers are increasingly being encouraged to do the same for Internet bandwidth.  By only delivering the data consumed by the user by using the streaming server features in Windows Media Services for Live and on-demand content and/or the upcoming IIS7 Media Pack, content providers can realize lower costs of delivery of a wide range of content types and be a more responsible, "Netizen".  One of the complaints we've heard about Windows Media Services in the past is the complexity of having to manage a separate service in a separate console for media, separate from the web server and application farm.  Windows Media Services 2008 addresses this with simplified admin, and unparalleled scalability.  In tests, WMS 2008 is twice as scalable as the release in Windows Server 2003 on the same hardware which means fewer servers, and higher performance.  Unlike some other solutions, Windows Media Services is a fully 64-bit enabled service, not a 32-bit solution running atop the platform.  There are a number of additional features here, which Harry Mower goes into on his blog here. 

But what if you want to  host your on-demand media content on your Web server or are supporting multiple file types from different vendors?  This is where the IIS7 Media Pack comes in.  This new add-on delivers intelligent bit-rate throttling for a wide range of file types - including Windows Media, QuickTime, Real, and even Flash video content.  What's more, it's configurable so that it can be used for application downloads as well.  By throttling content downloads, you ensure a more efficient and scalable delivery model.  Windows Server 2008 also supports clustering, enhanced cache/proxy support and much more that customers have come to expect in an industrial-strength content delivery platform.

HD video puts increasing strain on infrastructure, which is why we're working closely with big content delivery networks and startups alike who are looking for ways to address, and ensuring that Silverlight is a viable solution for them.  Download WS2008 and the IIS7 Media Pack Bit-rate Module today.

It's not just about stunning marketing sites and video on the Web - enterprise customers have recognized the proven reliability and scalability of Windows Media streaming and IIS for LOB applications, corporate communications, or e-learning solutions using a trusted solution broadly used for years- it's just getting better.  Experience matters as Forrester's recent RIA report notes- even in the enterprise.  It's our intent to seamlessly integrate Silverlight into existing installations and make it simple and scalable for others.

Windows Server 2008 will be released on February 27 2008, but you don't have to wait to start taking advantage of the platform already in use in some of the biggest sites on the web- you'll hear more about this come launch.

Free Content Distribution with Silverlight Streaming

If you aren't interested in setting up your own server, you can host on the MS network via Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live.  Currently available in test form, you can host up to 4GB of Silverlight applications on Microsoft's geo-distributed network. Primarily created as a simple way to host video-based applications for developers, Silverlight Streaming has been adopted by Solution Providers and even ISVs such as Roxio for simple video publishing.  To fully prove out the network, we've been hosting applications including the Halo3 Interactive Manual.  You can expect even more great things from the Silverlight Streaming team in the new year.

Content Playback in Silverlight

Silverlight 1.0 today offers great media delivery options, addressing cross-platform support with Mac and Windows (Linux support coming), and cross-browser support for IE, Firefox, and Safari. Thanks to the efficiencies offered by the SMPTE-standardized VC-1 video format, Silverlight can deliver HD-quality without hardware acceleration as can be see here.  (It's important to note that two formats were selected for next-generation video experiences in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD - VC-1 and H.264. Today over 90% of all HD-DVD titles are presented in VC-1). No pre-requisite version of Windows Media Player or any other player is required with Silverlight, just a small browser plug-in.  What's more, with Silverlight, your HD content can play off of any web server or take advantage of the Windows Server efficiencies covered above.

There's a lot more happening by way of media support in Silverlight- more details to come in the following months. Scott detailed the developer-focused roadmap here. One thing I can saw we're working on across the stack is performance - at MIX last year, folks saw what .NET could do, with a 1000x improvement in performance over script-based solutions.  The teams are thinking about performance across the stack as seen with Windows Server, and you'll see with Silverlight 2.0

If you're a hardcore video geek dealing with the mix-mash of video formats and wondering what will really be supported in the December 2007 Xbox Dashboard Update, then you'll want to read this FAQ.  Otherwise, we return you to your morning coffee.

Xbox Team : December 2007 Video Playback FAQ

Michael Gartenberg, wizard of digital media at Jupiter Research recently blogged  about  the new round in the HD format battle. With Best Buy following Wal-Mart in offering Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD players at a swank $99, Michael notes, "At that [price] point, it's not a competition between HD-DVD and Blue-Ray, it's a competition (correctly so) between HD-DVD and DVD."

Frankly, the whole topic jumped the shark for me nearly six months ago.  But the whole price war has really piqued my curiosity.  I wonder if Toshiba and its partners can keep the prices that low and for how  long?  Either way, Michael has an interesting point - "With prices that low, backwards compatibility and some very good content starting to appear (the Heroes Season 1 Box Set, Transformers and soon the first season the original Star Trek series) we may be getting to a point this holiday season that could tip the balance."

Back in February, I did a quick analysis of the price points for the formats, based on Amazon.com price points for the top players in both formats.  While unscientific, this yielded an average cost of nearly $850 for BD and $400 for HD-DVD (not including game consoles).  While it's clear that BD players have made the most movement, it's unclear when or if prices will drop to this price on an average basis.

And Sony's response to the HD price event?  "Blu-ray will be down to $399 and slightly below that, but not much lower," according to Sony Electronics President Stan Glasgow.

Whether Toshiba was looking to move old inventory (as in a unit that first shipped Q1CY07), or this represents a tipping point in the HD format battles is unclear. Either way, the PR and marketing value of HD-DVD becoming synonymous with "Affordable HD on a disc" is palpable.

Whichever way this one goes, my advice still remains- sign up for NetFlix or Blockbuster's online service and receive whichever format you prefer without purchasing the discs until the whole format war is sorted out.

Note: I do not work for nor with the HD-DVD effort at Microsoft - all comments are my own and not representative of my employer.

Don't know who Akamai is?  You should.  According to some reports, a majority of internet downloads and audio/video streams run through their content delivery network (CDN).  GigaOm has a solid writeup on Akamai's new HD delivery network for the Web capable of delivering the highest level of commercialized HD - 1080p to the masses.  Realistically, I don't expect we'll see a lot of 1080p content floating around for a matter of years, but certainly within the next five it will become commonplace for commercial  content. 720p will work for a lot of short-form content, with many movie trailers already being offered up in HD on sites including the new Halo 3 HD Mini Movie done with Weta digital (Peter Jackson's outfit).

Every year, the publishers of Videography, DV, Digital Cinematography, and Television Broadcast magazines get together at NAB and announce the "Best of Show" award winners in multiple categories.

The Best of Show Awards are given in recognition of outstanding achievement in the advancement of the art and science of video technology, include the Videography Vidy Awards, the longest running NAB awards program, the Television Broadcast Top Innovation Awards, the DV Black Diamond Awards, and the Digital Cinematography Premiere Awards.

"To receive an award, a technology is evaluated by our panel of editors and industry experts," says NewBay Media Video Group Vice President/Group Publishing Director Doug Krainman. "The winning technologies reflect innovation and engineering excellence.

I'm elated to note that Microsoft Silverlight was the recipient of a coveted DV Black Diamond Award, in such esteemed company as Apple Final Cut Studio 2.  Congrats to the entire team!

Last week, IP delivered television got a little closer to reality or a lot closer to irrational Web 2.0 exuberance when Amazon and TiVo flipped the switch enabling Amazon customers to send movies ordered from Amazon.com directly to your TiVo Series 2 or Series 3 boxes.  My wife and I took this for a spin last week, renting a few movies, including one with the $15 credit you get as a TiVo customer.  There's a few things I like about the service, and a lot I don't. 

What I like

• Convenience of ordering a movie from home or work
• Integration with Amazon.com is easy enough
• Ability to send to any TiVo in my home, or supported devices
• Selection is respectable
• TiVo Integration is simple- 'Amazon Unbox" shows up as a new Folder in Now Playing

What I don't like

• Lack of a subscription program. 
• No "Season Pass" purchase for TV programs
• No easy way to search/filter movies by MPAA rating
• On TiVo, no progress meter or estimated time until your movie is ready to start playing
• No HD downloads
• No 10' movie browser on Tivo.  All movies must be browsed & ordered with a PC
• Encoding is fuzzy
• No option to get the movie sent on DVD/HD-DVD as well

While this is definitely a step in the direction of convenience, if Amazon is serious about this business model, I hope they're working on a subscription program and/or considering a deal with NetFlix or Blockbuster directly (NetFlix acqusition anyone?).  I'm not likely to buy a $14.99 movie when $3.00 more a month gets me a subscription pass and HD movies on Blockbuster.

Disclaimer: I don't speak for Microsoft nor work for any group involved in HD-DVD in my below comments.  There's purely my own for right or wrong.

ArsTechnica has an interesting take on the new Nielsen VideoScan data that shows Blu-ray is starting to close the gap.  What's not covered here is the intellectual savvy of many consumers to NOT BUY EITHER DISC and rather rent from Blockbuster or NetFlix, both of which support both formats.

Nielsen VideoScan is the go-to source for the consumer electronics industry when it comes to tracking video sales. The metrics firm tracks sales in nearly every distribution channel from the Internet to big-box retailers and specialty stores. Although hardware sales figures have been easy to come by, the movie studios and distributors have kept actual movie sales figures under wraps, so this is one of the first clear glimpses of what's going on with next-gen disc sales.

I thought this was a new tracker for Nielsen?  They're the only source as far as I know.  At least Ars points out all these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. 

The units sold #s are highly circumspect.  HD-DVD units for Xbox are bought for HD-DVD viewing, HD-DVD players are bought for HD-DVD viewing.  I'd be interested to see what percentage of PS3 owners are actually using their PS3 for viewing Blu-Ray discs. Just because PS3 ships with a Blu-Ray disc player does not mean the consumer has a) an HDTV or b) a desire to view Blu-ray discs.

I wrote more about the cost/benefit of HD-DVD late last year and recommendations that consumer do not buy discs in either format.  Where are the NetFlix and Blockbuster #'s on rentals of both formats?  Let's see the full picture.

As an early adopter of NetFlix, I've written many times here about how good the service is was.  Over the holidays however, that all went horribly, horribly wrong.  My wife and I use NetFlix in spurts- some months we're busy doing something else and don't watch any, then when the TV season goes into hiatus, we catch up on movies.

I've done my part to help their ratings system- my wife and I have collectively rated nearly 400 movies over the years. 

So what did NetFlix do to cause me to switch to Blockbuster's Total Access? 

It started with two out of five discs rented in the last month being cracked.  We're not talking a little crack, we're talking a full 1mm from the edge. I reported both, and noticed it took a longer time than usual to get a replacement of one (the other I didn't request a replacement).  It's embarassing when you have to explain to your in-laws why at a key point in the plot of a movie, you can't watch the rest, nor get another disc during the remainder of their trip because NetFlix is too slow.

Prior to sending the movies back, I moved three movies to the top of my queue.  All were available and I had always received movies listed at the top.  What did I get in return?  Movies from the bottom of my queue.  We're talking over a dozen movies down.  There's no possible way all of the  movies above it were checked out, and I checked!  Like the lint that congregates under your bed, these movies had collected at the bottom of our queue and we had forgotten about them.

David Pogue wrote about NetFlix's great customer service last year.  It's true, I've had nothing but good experiences when reporting a lost disc (and returned later to be credited).  Then Michael Arrington wrote about how NetFlix's complicated algorithms punish frequent users of the service.  I rented more movies during the holidays (vacation?) after literally multiple months of not renting any. 

Somehow, like Arrington, I got "NetFlixed":

Netflixed  /netflicksed/  –adjective

1. punished due to regular usage of services paid-for

2. twisted; awry, as in the condition of discs when received

3. Slang. extracting highest possible profit out of customer by artificially adjusting service offerings to penalize usage.

It looks like the algorithm uses a 30-60 day usage window to enable throttling and doesn't take into account months of pure profit they reaped from me when I wasn't using the service.  Perhaps I'm being punished for reporting two out of three shipped discs being cracked.  How is that my fault?

I tried contacting NetFlix  and have yet to get a response other than, "Sorry, we get a lot of mail".  No problem.  Unsubscribed.

So I've dropped NetFlix as of today, and moved to Blockbuster's Total Access where I also get a free movie on the spot when I return a DVD in-store instead of via mail (we have one by our gym).  They also have a great selection of HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray titles.  Now I just need a Media Center-enabled UI for Blockbuster's service (as I have for NetFlix via the community) and my world is complete.

Congratuations NetFlix- by mis-managing customer expectations you've replaced my prior disdain for Blockbuster's glassy-eyed checkout clerk and late fees with a new disdain for your business practices.

If you're thinking about Blu-Ray (BD) vs. HD-DVD this holiday season, something to consider- Blu-Ray isn't just suffering from PS3 backlash, the average BD player on Amazon.com is 41% more expensive than HD DVD. This weekend, I took a look at baseline costs on Amazon and determined you can buy the average BD player and zero movies, or get an HD DVD player and over four and a half years of NetFlix HD rentals at the same price. Even comparing cheapest models, you can rent nearly two years of HD DVD movie rentals from NetFlix before reaching the purchase price of the cheapest Blu-Ray player. 

Note this is at the lowest tier of NetFlix so there's an assumption you're only renting about 2 movies per month, but still, NetFlix is a great way to sidestep the whole HD format lock-in issue- I never buy an HD disc unless I expect to watch it semi-monthly for the next five years.  With NetFlix even at its lowest tier, you get the flexibility of watching movies in BD or HD DVD formats, effectively dropping the price of adoption to the cost of the player (because you're going to rent movies, aren't you?) <g>. 

Update: Note I've intentionally left out the PS3 and Xbox 360 from this list.  There's an impedance mis-match in terms of adoption and cost associated with the two- do you count the overall price, or just the price of the drive (in which Xbox 360 would win hands-down at under $300).

The last point to make is about availability of content and there, your mileage may vary, though studios are doing more dual-releases now. 

• Blu-Ray Historical List of Movies released: http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/releasedates_historical.html
• HD-DVD Historical List of Movies released: http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/releasedates_historical.html

Michael Gartenberg has a good analysis on the Xbox HD TV and Movie service announced earlier today:

Net? A good move for Microsoft and XBox to add functionality without compromising anything related to game play. Don't be fooled by the limited content (although current content maps to the gamer demographic well). Like iTunes, we'll see more stuff coming to Live pretty quickly.

Engadget has details here. VC-1 will be the codec used for delivery of HD content.  The HD trailers were just an appetizer. IPTV just became a mainstream reality overnight. 

It's back - HD-DVD Tuesday!  The movies coming out are accelerating, so I'm going to feature weekly releases:

October 30, 2006

• Mission: Impossible - Ultimate Missions Set (Paramount)
• Mission: Impossible III (Paramount)

October 31, 2006

• Excalibur (Warner)
• Under Siege (Warner)
• V for Vendetta (Warner)

via HighDef Digest

  Ditch the tape, Furrygoat (Steve) points to the Sony HDR-SR1 camcorder that records in High-Definition, 1080i quality on a built-in 30GB hard drive (which loosely translates to around 2 hours of recording in highest quality).  This should work out of the box with Windows (Vista) Movie Maker which has support for HDV editing (yes, my Mac does that too thanks).  Though I understand the new camera uses the MPEG-4/AVC/H.264 codec so you may still have to do some conversion. It also takes adequate 4 megapixel stills, and has dolby digital 5.1 recording.  you can even snap 2.3 megapixel stills while you're recording video.  Sony still seems slave to their own proprietary Memory Stick format, but otherwise, this sounds like a winner.  As Furry says, "Must. Resist. Temptation."  At $1300, I'll be resisting unfortunately for a while.  I do wonder though- should I put it on my christmas list and hope that my wife reads my blog, amping up the whole "our son will never get any younger" argument for purchase? 

More details and a preliminary review can be found at camcorderinfo.com.

The good folks working on HD DVD at Microsoft have started a blog called "The HD DVD Insiders" - it's starting out small, but for the Home Theater geek and industry pro alike, I expect this is going to become a popular site to supplement the AVSForums so many of us enjoy for the inside scoop.  Not much content yet, but Ben and others tell me they have podcasts, interviews, Q&A's and more in store.  Subscribed.

Uninnovate.com has an interesting article on Apple's new support of "Reverse syncing" of content with the iTunes 7 release yesterday:

Today, Apple released iTunes 7.0, among other things. In earlier versions of iTunes, Apple did its best to prevent users from being able to copy music from an iPod back to a desktop computer. Now, Apple has changed course and is marketing “Reverse Syncing” as a new feature of iTunes 7.

But there is one giant catch:

1. Music and media not purchased from the iTunes store only syncs one way, from your computer to your iPod.

This is uninnovation in its most frustrating form. It’s easy to spot and avoid drm-saturated junk, but these kinds of subtle limitations in an otherwise great product frustrate users and drive them to alternative applications. How about trusting the user enough to let them get at their own files without these childish restrictions?

WMP11 added reverse file transfer support back in March which works with purchased, and clear content. (It’s also had album art matching in WMP9, dramatically improved in WMP11). I think the author is being a bit overzealous however in his claim of “uninnovation”- it's always been easy to transfer music off your iPod, it's just a little hidden.  Here it’s a little less hidden.

I’ve seen lots of chatter on iTV - Apple's Media Center Extender-esque device for streaming video to the living room.  It feels like we’ve been here before. Long Zheng at istartedsomething.com has a good recap of the relative strengths and weaknesses of products in this space.   It seems a bit odd that Apple would break from long-time tradition and give a "sneak preview" of a product that won't be available for at least Q1 '07, particularly when they could have held the announce to availability around MacWorld in January. It's clear they had to do this to try and spur purchase of movies from their new store- with no rental model, people just don't want to buy movies to watch on their portable players. Tell them they'll be able to play it in other places as well around the home and their likelihood of purchase is higher.  It’s the battle of cognitive dissonance - buyer's remorse. After all, you're already dealing with the psychological barrier in that the user is buying an intangible good, something without physical form that perceptually has less value than physical media such as DVDs. But... you're going to charge about the same as a physical DVD. Without the Bonus DVD content.  Oh and the 640x480 video quality people are downloading is going to be between VHS and DVD quality (which offers 720x480p).  Never mind that it will be potentially less for letterboxed content since the new iPod doesn't support 16:9 (widescreen) display.  In the time it will take most customers to download one of these movies, I could have gone to the store, bought the DVD, popcorn, a 6-pack of Coke, dinner, come home, cooked dinner, and be ready to watch. In a rental model, all of these issues can be forgiven for immediate gratification and a lower price, as witnessed by the popularity of Video On Demand and InDemand services.

The challenges in streaming TV from the PC aren't just the hypothesized need for higher speed wireless (802.11n) which should be provisionally approved in early 2007.  This might be delaying their launch, but streaming 640x480 video across the home has been possible with Media Center Extender for just about two years now.  A challenge is going to be convincing consumers to buy and set up yet another single-purpose device in the living room, another remote, another input on the TV for this thing.

Today, you can get an Xbox 360 that includes Media Center Extender at no additional cost. Over 16 million Media Center customers can use this today, no additional charge. Even if you don’t have a TV tuner in your PC, you can connect a USB tuner and record TV or HDTV (OTA today, Digital Cable with equipped PCs with Vista). No additional fees.  As announced at CES last year, multiple HDTV manufacturers are putting Media Center extender into their designs, something that costs less than a night at the movies to implement.

As for another box in the living room, the Xbox 360 does HD gaming, DVD/HD-DVD Playback, Music, Photos, Video, TV/HDTV playback, runs rich media apps from a multitude of providers, and delivers an increasing amount of media content via Xbox Live, including HD.   And it's going to get significantly better with Windows Vista Premium's Media Center features – automatically updating your Xbox 360 to support in the family room with the same level of animation and experience. 

Either way, a saying comes to mind: “A rising tide raises all boats” and for that I welcome Apple's foray.  But if Apple's iTV costs the same as an Xbox,  offers nothing more than a "simplified remote" and fewer mainstream features which really makes more sense when competing for  consumer dollars outside the Job's faithful?  With Sony and Nintendo's Wii also vying for that same space, it's about to get a bit more crowded. Or perhaps just noisy.  So begins the "Great Family Room Battle of 2007".

(Disclaimer: I used to work on Media Center, but haven't for over a year, and speak only for myself.)

Microsoft Corporate Vice President Amir Majidimehr recently took time to post in AVSForum on the new digital audio features in Windows Vista that haven't really seen much publicity yet.  Net-net is that when paired with the right audio drivers supporting the new features, you'll get customizable enhancements normally reserved for high-end AV receivers such as:

• System-wide Loudness equalization
• Bass Management (get the bass channel even on systems without a subwoofer)
• Better support for surround sound systems up to 7.1 channels
• Virtualized surround sound (Surround-->2 speakers)- mix 5.1 DVD's to headphones or standard desktop speakers
• Virtual Surround (Stereo-->Surround)- turn 2-channel into surround sound for your receiver
• Room Calibration - using a simple microphone, this profiler "listens" to the sound from each of your speakers to automatically adjust pitch and volume for where you're sitting in the room.  The better the mic, the better the results (My favorite for Media Center in the home theater!)

Now, not all audio drivers will support these features at Vista RC1- it's up to the sound card manufacturers to support it via in-box class drivers.  I know that HD Audio from Intel integrated into many new PC motherboards over the past 2 years does support it, but the currently available Beta 2 drivers from other card manufacturers haven't implemented yet.

Also worth mentioning is the work being done to really reduce latency and improve resiliency in the entire audio stack, both important to pro musicians and consumers alike.

You can also ask Amir questions about Vista Audio Processing here.

And a new whitepaper with more detail on Audio Innovations with screenshots is available here via the official Vista Blog.

•  That's the Way of the World (BCI)

(Slower holiday week in the US - expect many more next week. ;) )

Courtesy High-Def Digest