Just in time for the holidays- a few surprises from the Windows XP Client team. A new Winter Fun Pack has just been released with add-ons for Media Center and more. Of particular interest to Media Center and Media Player 10 users:

Tweak MCE 2005 - A new Media Center 2005 Powertoy and add-on app that enables power users to control settings such as Skip Interval for “Trickplay”, Reaction timings, enable Universal Remote controls, UI timeouts & notifications, and even enable 16:9 support on Windows Media Center Extenders. There's just too much to list!

Whitecap (Holiday Edition) Visualization - From Andy O'Meara, creator of the popular G-Force Viz for MCE, this new viz is very cool and includes a number of holiday shapes and visualizations.

Yule Log Visualization - The classic visualization of a warm fireplace, the fire crackling and flaring to the music.

Winter Ice Storm Visualization - A wintry scene comes alive with snow and ice in this popular viz from years past.

Holiday Auto Playlists - I personally think this is the most under- rated feature in MP10.  These Holiday autoplaylists scour your media library to create music playlists based on a wide set of keywords for popular holidays including Hannukah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa. Great for taking holiday music on your portable music players or Portable Media Centers too.

Download the new items as a part of the Winter Fun Pack 2004 available today. If there's something you'd like to see in future packs, please let me know and I'll pass it along to the team.