From the wires: Netflix Inc. the world's largest online movie rental service, today

announced it will carry the first movies available in HD DVD when the new

high-definition format launches in late March, according to plans recently

outlined by several major movie studios, and said it will similarly offer

titles in the Blu-ray format when that product launches, expected to be

later this year.

GO HAWKS!  What a great game. Ok, here is my promised story:

Not many people know that there are actually two people named, "Shawn Alexander" in the Seattle area. One is the superstar MVP running back for the Seattle Seahawks leading the league in rushing yards. The other is me, a Microsoft employee whose been lucky to have my smaller moments in the limelight.  I wish I could say I get preferential treatment around town but that's not the case and no, I've never met the man. But one day about four years ago, our worlds collided.  It all started with my wedding.

My wife and I were married in the Summer of 2000.  The ceremony was held in the Bay Area and it was the best day of my life. We received a wide range of gifts from friends near and far that seemed to trickle in over a almost a year.  Then, about 14 months after our wedding, a package arrived to my office.  I opened it up and realized it was a wedding present, and subsequently left it in my office for about a month (bad Sean!).  Then packing up to leave one day, I realized my error and brought the package home. 

It was a typical evening- Nickie and I were chatting about our day and I left the package on the kitchen table while sorting through the mail.

"What's this?" Nickie asked.

"A belated wedding present I think." I responded.

Nickie opened the packaging and missed the envelope for the gift card.  She then went on to open the card.

"Honey?" she asked.

"Yes" I responded.

"Do we know a 'Coach and Kathy Holmgren'?"

The words hung in the air for a second as we went through our mental wedding lists.  Then it hit us.

"You don't think... isn't Holmgren the Head Coach of the Seahawks?" she started.

"Oh my gosh" I said.  I had remembered seeing Shaun Alexander had just gotten married. It clicked- the package and gift was from a local Seattle store on our registry.

"They must have picked the wrong Alexander from the gift registry."

We talked about what to do. The gift was nice, something we had picked out.  I was running scenarios in my head- would Shaun care?  Would he be offended to think Holmgren didn't give him a gift?  Probably not. But ethically, we agreed we just couldn't keep it.  So next posed the problem- how would I get it back to the Holmgrens?  It was from our registry, so I wasn't sure Shaun would want it.

Then I started the process of trying to return the item.  No daunting task.

You see, there are thousands of Seahawks fans locally who would like nothing more than to share their zeal for the team with the coaching staff and players.  You won't find an email address or phone #of the Seahawks on the web site (at least I didn't back then).  Eventually, I realized the path of least resistance was likely the Seahawks PR department.  Many a time I've been contacted the same way at Microsoft.  So, I cold-called the PR department, and left them  a voicemail message.

Two days later, I got a call back from the Seahawks.  They apologized for the situation and explained that the Holmgren's assistant had accidentally picked the wrong Alexander off the gift registry.  They asked to coordinate a time for a "runner" to pick up the item.  Later the next day, sure enough the "runner" arrived at my office and apologized for the inconvenience. I explained it was no problem. He also gave me a small bag with two Seahawks hats and bumper stickers as thanks. I was appreciative to receive it.  I wasn't expecting tickets or anything.

So... that was my first brush with Shaun Alexander.  Judging by the hugs after yesterday's game, I'm sure everything is fine between Holmgren and Alexander despite all the hoopla at the end of last season.

 By now you're probably wondering what the gift was.  I'm not saying... until after the Seahawks win the Super Bowl <g>.

Go HAWKS!

Audioholics did an interview with Sage Schreiner, HD DVD Program Manager which helps to clear up some misconceptions about the coming format.  Personally, I got one of the sample (production-ready) hybrid HD-DVD/DVD discs that was being handed out at the Microsoft booth at CES and can't wait to try it out.  It's literally a single-sided disc with both the HD-DVD and DVD formatted movies on it and plays in both types of drives.

CD Freaks, the self-ascribed, "World's Largest CD/DVD Community" recently did a poll which format would be the follow-up to DVD.  The results of over 500 respondents polled can be found here.

While this doesn't mean anything from a scientific perspective, it is interesting to see that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are effectively neck and neck with this audience, with a good-sized # of holdouts.

In other news, reportedly Blu-Ray drives for PCs will be ready in March. The drives can read CDs, DVDs but will not be able to burn until the second generation hits the market this summer.

Mano Clement has a great roundup here thanks to Robert Scoble. Items of interest to Digital Media enthusiasts:

- Many times the perf on Networking stack (and USB stack too BTW) ;)

- All new Audio stack with per-app audio and more.

- FAST search through tens of thousands to millions of tracks in WMP11 (I can't go back)

- Other features I just can't talk about yet...

I talked to Robert last week and we're going to line up a bunch of videos for Channel 9 on digital media efforts in Windows Vista in the coming month.  Stay tuned for more.  And congrats to Robert and Shel on their book- sorry I missed the party- had another party last night!

(Update: All my Beta invites are spoken for. If I get more, we'll have another runoff.  Thanks!)

I'm a huge believer in "dogfooding" our own products.  After my friend Harry (who runs the Windows Vista demo lab) moved his own home PC to the December CTP (Customer Technology Preview), I decided to take this integrated build thing for a spin.

You see, for "the field" at Microsoft (that's what we call the subsidiary offices), they also need to be able to show Vista to customers.  Of course, they have all sorts of different hardware, so creating a master demo image can be a pain.  With Vista, the drivers are "abstracted" from the core OS - the result is that you can build a single image and deploy it on multiple PCs of different types and in most cases, no additional drivers are required. 

In my case, I run an Intel D865PERL mobo and P4HT processor w/ a mix of SATA and IDE drives and the like.  Vista recognized everything, including the ATI Theater 550 and Hauppauge TV tuner boards.  It set up no sweat, off of the demo disc Harry gave me.  Sure, there is the occasional bug and performance optimizations haven't started yet, but it's looking pretty good.

I have a raft of feedback for my team on areas we can provide fit and finish.  Overall though, I'm finding it really hard to go back to Windows XP and WMP10 on my freshly installed dual-boot system.  WMP11 is sooo much better.  Sidebar is really coming along as well (I know I'm teasing- good things come to those who wait!)

Want to do a little dogfooding yourself?  I have 9 invites to Windows Live Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger) top 9 answers for why you'd make a good beta tester (pictures may be submitted  via email) will get the invites. 

Oh and in case you haven't noticed, I've switched my photoblog to Flickr - I'm sean_alexander there. Gosh I love that service, more on that another time.  Now we need a totally tricked out Flickr screensaver (I was unimpressed by Slickr, sorry).  We also need a general tag/cropping mechanism for display on 16:9/16:10 displays (most widescreen PC monitors are 16:10 <g>).

The winners of the Next-Gen Windows PC Design Competition have been announced.  This was a risky idea I had back when I worked on Vista planning. While I'm not longer associated with its development, I'm excited to see the team do a great job carrying through on this competition and the winning design, "Bookshelf" was personally my favorite as well.  I understand it was so successful it may become an annual event.

There's a ton of good talent and good ideas out there.  I just wish the economics of the PC industry were such that more manufacturers had premium brands that looked premium as well as the innards (hello, Dell XPS?)

I have a cold, so I'm a bit cranky tonight.  Can someone please add this one to snopes.com alongside the idea that Bill Gates will give you $5000 or a trip to Disneyland if you send some random email to 5 of your friends and family?

There have been recent reports in the blogosphere that Verizon's new upgraded V-Cast service won't allow users to play MP3s, and this is Microsoft's doing.  This is categorically false.  Yes, Microsoft was a technology provider to Verizon to enable their new services, but in now way put restrictions on Verizon using other technologies.

<rant> I mean, come on, Microsoft added high-bitrate MP3 encoding to WMP10 (ok, it was a bit late) but at the end of the day, I don't know of anyone wringing their hands thinking about how Microsoft can kill MP3.  WMA and MP3 happily co-exist in most portable music devices (ahem, except for iPod, but you'd have to ask Mr. Jobs about that one).

Another case in the textbook on why it's best not to assume the worst of intentions before you start pointing fingers.

CNet has posted their Best of CES award winners and Creative has done it again with the Zen Vision:M. I've been playing with a Zen Vision:M for a few weeks now and I love it.  It has twice the video playback of the video iPod (4hrs vs. iPod's 2hrs) and frankly, I'll exhange a bit of thickness for being able to watch a full movie on a charge any day of the week.  The UI is familiar and friendly.  My only major complaint so far is the adapter needed for USB/charging and it has too many controls (4 discrete buttons + 2 rocker positions + touchpad.

So, this got me thinking about how Windows Media might have fared this year at CES. Here's a rundown of my report card:

• Best in Show: Creative Zen Vision:M - does WMV, WMA, and is PlaysforSure
• People's Voice: Pioneer Inno (aka Samsung Helix) - it does 50 hours of XM Radio recording, WMA and cool bookmarking feature for Napster so it's going to be PlaysforSure. Not bad- not bad at all.
  
• Cameras and Camcorders: Sanyo Xacti HD1 - a slick little HD (720p) camcorder/digital still camera that records to 1GB SD cards. Though no direct support for WMV, it records into MPEG-4 which Microsoft is a member of the patent pool.
• Home Audio: Denon AVR-2807 - supports playback of multiple formats including HDCD owned by Microsoft, but what's really stellar is the built-in WM Connect digital audio receiver in it's older sibling product, also called out in the article.
• Car tech: Pioneer AVIC-Z1 - This double-din unit is a multimedia powerhouse w/ 30 GB HDD, GPS, bluetooth built-in all atop Windows Automotive so it should be able to support WMA as well. iPod connector support coming too.
• Home Video: Pioneer BDP-HD1 Blu-ray player - noted to be around $1800 vs. $499 HD DVD players, this is still a win because Blu-Ray requires the SMPTE-standard submitted Microsoft VC-1 codec.

So how did Microsoft do? Both of the grand prizes support PlaysforSure services and WMA and 6 out of 8 winning products (in eligible categories) for awards include Microsoft digital media technologies.  Not a bad roundup at the end of the show and there's still a ton of work to be done.

I also just learned that all 3 nominees in the Best of CES: MP3 and Digital Video category support PlaysforSure and WMA (or WMV), including Windows Media Player 11 :).

I had the rare opportunity to lounge in the grass picnic-style with Thomas Hawk, Ian Dixon and his wife and blather on about digital media in general.  Thomas has a good recap of our conversation over on his site not to mention some stunning pictures.  Thomas has inspired me to re-engage on Flickr and I've posted my own pics from the show here.

Lots of big announcements that are ushering in the year of HD.  I would link but have to run to my flight.  A quick recap:

• CEA announces HDTV sales will beat analog TV sales in 06
• Windows Vista will have support for HDTV over digital cable, and DVR! I've tested it, it really works.  I can't wait.
• ATI announces HDTV Cablecard designs (note they aren't the first and only though ;)). 
• ViiV PCs from Intel will sport HDTV playback abilities.
• Buzz on the floor that retailers saw Xbox 360 as a key accelerant to HDTV purchases during the holiday season.
• Gates tipped us off that Xbox 360 will get an external HD-DVD drive :):):)
• HD-DVD and Blu-Ray were everywhere at CES, duking it out.  Blu-Ray demos focused on hardware demos, Microsoft on ability to copy HD-DVDs to your PC and really rich interactivity. It will be interesting to see how this goes.
• Oh, a consumer HD-DVD player will ship for $499 from Toshiba available this March! 
• TiVo announces their new Series 3 with HD over digital cable (OCUR/Cablecard) support and a SATA-based drive, sync to PMC, iPod, and PSP coming (does Portable Media Center (PMC) devices today.
• Tons of HDTV set announcements.  Excitement around 1080p - only place to get 1080p today is select WMV-HD discs, almost everything else is up-res'd 1080i but people like the buzz.

More to come...

Whew.  Crazed schedule at CES, I really haven't had time to post as I'd like.  The Windows Vista/MTV-Urge party last night was completely crazed.  I've literally never seen lines that long (about 200 feet) to get in, and when in, the floors were completely packed.  Microsoft parties have had great attendance before, but the buzz I kept hearing was about the Urge announcement (and the party). I get irritated with large crowds so I ended up hanging out in the "VIP area" most of the night trying to keep away from the crowds.

The keynote went well the day before- I had lunch with BillG's speechwriter the week before and made a few jokes about the importance having an electrical engineer monitoring the power after last year's power outage. It's good to be able to laugh about it now.  It's even better when the keynote went so well.  One thing that did bother me though- little applause, little laughter. This is a fundamental difference between MS and Apple - they surround themselves with their fans, throw a bash for them, and THAT is where they announce their products (like next week).  The buzz is infectious. Press and public alike get wrapped up.  I don't buy statements that CES or other shows are the equivalent of a "WinWorld".  The problem is too many audiences to make this work effectively.

One of the pieces that has me so excited this year is the new Windows Media Player 11.  This is part of the reason I re-joined the group.  Can you say performance?  I have over 10,000 tracks in my library.  I was so tired of UI freezes and slow searches that I started using Windows Desktop Search as my way of finding music. WMP11 takes a completely rethought and highly optimized database that is hands-down the fastest media player library I've ever seen- visually and logically. Album art is amazing. There are tons of perf improvements folks are just starting to see. I'm also hearing about additional perf optimizations in Vista's USB stack that will help as well. MCE users will benefit from all of this as well.  More on this over on the new Windows Vista site at : http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/community/mediaplayer.aspx

I've accepted recently that I'm now more a part of the VH1 demographic than MTV. At first I wasn't wild about Urge but then I realized that MTVN (Networks) recognizes this fact, and that's part of the reason they created the Urge brand.  I'll be able to tap into my favorite "classic rock" like Alice in Chains, Aerosmith, and  Now, I'm addicted. Urge integrates cleanly into the UI, I can download and sync a playlist in one step.  And my favorite is "Feeds"- these are truly smart playlists. This concept takes the best of smart playlists, smart sync, and concepts like RSS and mashes them together.  What you get is truly smart playlists that update (and sync) to your device automatically.  More on that later.

There's so much more to WMP11 and Vista which hasn't even been announced yet.  Stay tuned.