As promised, the little elves have have been busy working on new surprises. The official Halo 3 Game Guide is now live, powered by Silverlight.  Get a sneak peek inside the game, the characters, and the story so far is this first of sure to be many game guides for upcoming Xbox 360 and Games for Windows titles. 

In addition to the game guide, we've placed new videos including "Enemy Weapon", "Believe" in HD and standard def for Mac and Windows users to enjoy in the Halo 3 Silverlight Movie Gallery.

But we heard you couldn't get enough Halo 3.  So we also posted, "The Making of Diorama", a story of the enduring survival of our species as told over a 3D snapshot of the epic battle and "Museum".  These were only shot in SD but we think you'll enjoy the higher quality originals.

Watch them all here, powered by the same Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live network you can use for your own clips.  Get your 4GB of free video space here.

Roxio, the same brand that brings consumers DVD burning applications just announced the release of Roxio Buzz.  What is Buzz?  Roxio Buzz makes publishing video clips and photo-slideshows to the Web fun and easy, and now supports Silverlight Streaming.  So get your free 4GB of video hosting here, and go check out Roxio Buzz. (Note: I'm checking into a demo version of Buzz for you as well).

The Halo 3 freight train moves on.  This time, it's the Tafiti experimental search engine that's been reskinned for the Halo 3 launch and is powered by Silverlight.  You might even see some new videos start to show up in the MSN and Windows Live-powered Halo 3 HD video gallery as well as some other nice touches shortly.

Oh and in case you're wondering who is serving all that bandwidth?  We're using the Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live service you can also use for free.

Check out the new World Series of Poker site powered by Silverlight and iStreamPlayer. 

Intel just announced the USB 3.0 specification a.k.a. "SuperSpeed USB" aiming to deliver 300Mbytes/sec in real throughput (that's 2.4 Gbit/sec) though in simulations has gone as high as 25Mbit/sec.  In comparison, USB 2.0 today runs about 480Mbit/sec.  Reports by  EETimes state that the new solution coming from Intel, HP, Microsoft, NEC, NXP, and TI will be available starting in  early 2009 and offer quality of service (QoS) features for applicatons such as HD video streams.  New cables will be backwards compatible and include an optical link.  This is great news for boosting throughput on HD camcorders, HD tuners and of course, Hard Drives. Engadget is noting  this could be the end of Firewire (1394) as Sony puts USB on their camcorders and Apple and Intel are working closely together.

On Friday, I had an opportunity to attend the Halo 3 Launch Appreciation Team party at an undisclosed location in the Redmond area.  This was the core marketing and  product management team responsible for releasing the product and it was a fun time.  Jerett, the Group manager for H3 had managed to secure eight final copies of the game for us to play and I took third in one of the rounds as a veritable noob on the final product.  All I can say is that the game still has surprises in it and the feel is so refined, so much more authentic when compared to Halo 2.  This was a good reminder that sometimes the most important meetings you have are outside the office.

By now a whole lot of you have seen the Halo 3 HD videos via Silverlight.  A question I sometimes get is why all the properties aren't done in Silverlight?  Answer is simple: we just shipped and a veritable army of vendors, creative agencies, and content providers A) are responsible for efforts such as the Halo launch and B) are being trained up on Silverlight as we speak, starting with top agencies of record.  Most of these campaigns were underway long before Silverlight was ready to ship.  Rest assured though, we'll have some more Silverlight goodies for fellow Halo 3 fans shortly. ;)

Speaking of goodies, one of my favorites is the new Halo 3 "Believe" experience.  This interactive diorama museum from the future was moving and has led to some very well produced fan commercials.  I'm pretty sure one of the prizes given away at the party was a soldier from the diorama (with a broken thumb) but it's significance was lost on me until I saw the site.

I've now had the pleasure to be involved in all three Halo launches - helping to produce the WMP skin and promotional DVD's for H1, the unveil of the H2 video in HD and 5.1 audio for the WM 9 Series Launch, and now HD and interactive efforts around Silverlight.  In my estimation, the journey has been the biggest reward.  I'm looking forward to launch day - Sept 25th.

(These thoughts are my own and don't reflect my employer)

There are certain things that are hard to watch being built - meat products and software come to mind.  In the software realm, the ante goes up when you're talking about consumer software that is critical to peace and harmony in the household.  Of course I'm talking about the DVR.

As the Group Product Manager for Windows Media Center 2004-2005, I had an enlightening opportunity to see the sheer volume of work required to create a stable DVR application that runs on a multitude of OEM PC configurations.  At the time, I really loved the product and technology. Then a few things happened.

First, I was given an opportunity/challenge to join the Vista team and had to leave my beloved MCE team behind.  I became a consumer again. Then, we moved to an area where I could no longer get an over-the-air HD signal and Media Center had to take a back seat as our HD DVR.

The Comcast Cable Box Nightmare
The Motorola box from Comcast was our only option at the time for watching HD, something that my wife and I both really enjoy.  But the Comcast box was (and continues to be) infuriatingly slow.  My wife regularly complained, rather her head spun like a merry-go-round whilst flames spew out of her mouth at the lack of performance.  The upholstery was starting to get charred from this weekly occurrence.

Switching to TiVo Series3
Finally, a solution that delivered adequate performance and HD DVR plus a few other features I loved.  After a year of my wife ranting about the Moto cable box, and realizing  it was going to be a while before Cablecard was ready for Media Center (and vice versa) I switched to the TiVo Series3.  It was a hard move, like the breakup of a long relationship. The extenders were put away, the Media Center removed from the living room.  I have raved here about my Series3 but recently have found myself disappointed in a few key areas:

• Database performance. Dare I say the TiVo seems slower than the Comcast box when adding new recordings or pulling up guide data
• UI sluggishness.  The TiVo engine seems like it hasn't changed much in5 years and neither has the performance save for a modest increase in speed
• UX Idiosyncracies.  Since adding new features such as Swivel Search and Amazon Unbox (both of which are welcome additions) the UI doesn't appear to be able to handle these additions elegantly.  Add to this the fact that the guide displays in 4:3 instead of 16:9 when tuned to an SD channel, and I get strange flickering as the device switches formats between channels and guides and it still has some rough edges (not to mention the rough edges on the graphics- this is HD!)
• A year later, still no ability to stream video from one TiVo to another room, only vague statements of future support. I understand these are issues related to CableCard's requirements and the long times to get certification on any solution, but this was a reason I wanted to go to TiVo! 

So, a few weeks ago I was invited to try a new Vista Media Center w/ CableCard support.  I held my breath and dove back in. 

Vista Media Center, Cable Cards Grow Up
At first I was apprehensive. I knew how complicated Cablecard setup could be and didn't look forward to training Comcast's CSRs as I had to with TiVo.  I installed the new PC, plugged in the Drobo, the ATI HD Cablecard tuners and set up the cablecards.  I had one defective card which I returned and after a quick call to Comcast, both were up and running.  Next I paired my two Xbox 360's and curiously, everything worked. I was tuning channels, recording two stations without issue.  Now keep in mind I have a wired ethernet network in my house, which certainly helps things.  I had forgotten just how polished the experience is on the Media Center.  Setup is still not as easy as it could be (this is symptomatic of the entire cable industry who was forced by the FCC to add support for 3rd party cable boxes on their networks so the clunky CableCard was born.  At least Comcast's CSR's were knowledgeable when I called to set it up. What a difference a year makes.

I'm now entering the two-week period with my Media Center working as an HD DVR. With a little reprogramming of my remote, my wife is actually happy. Every program we've scheduled has recorded.  Amazon Unbox works with Media Center as well and the promise of new Vista Media Center extenders with multiple format support (thank you Dave Alles!) and free Internet TV programming mean I can enjoy around the house.  I've been testing the new Internet TV features and think users will be pleased.

In an upcoming post, I'll compare and contrast my experiences.

The folks over on HowardForums are reporting that AT&T will finally release the Windows Mobile 6 update for Samsung Blackjack users on September 17th.  I hope this is true...  While a beta was unofficially released on the web a few months ago, the lack of any Internet Connection Sharing was a big issue for me.

Michael Scherotter has a great how to on creating screencasts with Silverlight here.  He provides a workflow for Camtasia end to end which is pretty cool.  We should do all our product demos like this.

Beet.tv has a good interview here with the creators the Entertainment Tonight application powered by Silverlight.

This is great news - apparently MCE can support up to four HD cable (cablecard) tuners.  Engadget has the scoop.  Off to company meeting now.  More on my Media Center cablecard experiences later today.

Scott Hanselman says:

Wow, I didn't see this coming. (That's a lie, I totally saw it coming and have been saying it could, would and should happen for months) Silverlight 1.0 is officially released as of 9pm PST and surprise! It will formally support Linux (screenshots) as Moonlight via a partnership with Novell in the coming months.

Andy Plessner says:

Microsoft just released Silverlight 1.0, the cross-platform, cross-browser plug-in for streaming video, games and other multi-media content. The company has a number of content partners who will use Silverlight including Entertainment Tonight, HSN, World Wrestling Entertainment.

Entertainment Tonight launches today in Silverlight.  (As reported on Beet.TV Major League Baseball launched in an earlier version of Silverlight in late July.)

Like Flash, Silverlight is a thin plug-in download... Thanks to everyone at Microsoft for such warm hospitality for the purple channel.
(Of course Andy- our pleasure!)

Computerworld noted:

[Microsoft] said it will work with Novell Inc. on the Linux version of Silverlight, to be called Moonlight.

Microsoft will build the video codecs for the Moonlight project and supply Novell with software to test and ensure Silverlight runs well on 32-bit and 64-bit PCs running Suse Linux, Red Hat and Ubuntu.

Infoworld quoted the WWE's creative director as saying:

It's the advantages from a development side that Silverlight offers us," in terms of streaming video costs and displaying multiple video streams, he said.

"Flash certainly is a great tool, and we have some Flash product on our site, but I think overall as a company to partner with, Microsoft is going to be a great partner going forward," Angert said. WWE plans to use Silverlight for wrestling videos and broadband content. Current systems will be kept in place without much change, Angert said.

And the News.com NewsBlog noted:

Another key part of Microsoft's Silverlight strategy is to rely on its development tools. Its Visual Studio programming tools and Expression-branded designer products ease collaboration between developers and Web designers, Goldfarb said.

Version 1.1 of Silverlight, which Microsoft announced at its Mix 07 conference in May, will be available next year, probably in the summer, he said. That version will have support for the .Net programming model used in Microsoft's development languages, including scripting languages.

With the Silverlight 1.0 release, Microsoft also intends to release Expression Encoder, a tool meant to make it easy to encode video for display on the Web with Silverlight.

Not a bad start.

Chalk it up to global warming.  Earlier tonight, Microsoft and Novell announced plans to bring Silverlight to our shared customers on Linux. In a solution called, "Moonlight", Novell will be creating a Silverlight implementation as a part of the Mono project.

Why is this significant?  It's a continuation of our commitment to listen to customers and bring Silverlight to the platforms that matter to them.  Scrape away the veneer and it's simple- because they asked us to. Nicely.  A lot of credit goes to Miguel de Icaza whom I had the opportunity to meet at MIX.  From there, the teams held a series of conversations throughout the summer. 

Also in the news, Entertainment Tonight is doubling down with Silverlight, as are about 35 other partners announcing support. 

I'd also be remiss to not mention that tomorrow AM, we're launching Expression Encoder.  If you're looking for an easy tool to publish video and audio content or even live events with Silverlight, Expression Encoder is your tool.  In the coming weeks, we'll also release a plug-in for publishing directly to Silverlight Streaming and an API that makes it easy to publish via other services.

Too much for one blog post.  Net-net, at MIX we said we'd deliver Silverlight 1.0 this Summer* and we did. Silverlight 1.1 is in tandem development and significant resources are going to this effort.  It's time to Light up the Web.

Congratulations to the teams who made this possible.  Truly the most "can do" effort in my time at MSFT.

(Note: Many web properties will launch tomorrow AM Pacific by design)