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"Fiji" Update for Windows Media Center RTMs, Exact Features Still a Mystery

Posted 07/23/08 at 11:02:50 PM  by Mark Edward Soper

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Windows Media Center "Fiji" Update RTMs

For Windows Vista users who use Windows Media Center, there's good news and bad news:

The good news? The long-awaited "Fiji" update to WMC, officially known as the Windows Media Center TV Pack, was released to manufacturing last week. The bad news? Pick a pair: a) TV Pack is currently available only to OEMs. b) Nobody who knows exactly what TV Pack includes is telling, and the rest of us don't know.

Best Guesses About "Fiji"

A recent story at EndgadgetHD suggests that TV Pack adds the following new features:
 

  • 16x9 thumbnails for HD video
  • HD recording preferences
  • favorite channels
  • support for more TV tuners
  • native QAM (aka "clear QAM") channel support (QAM is unencrypted digital cable TV signal)
  • support for various non-US TV tuners
  • Reassignment of broadcast channel numbers (useful for mapping four-digit ATSC digital broadcast channels to their familiar one or two-digit equivalents)
  • replacement of the MS-DVR TV recording format with a new format called WTV

Much of this speculation is based on leaked screenshots of a German version of the RC0 pre-release edition.

The Mystery Ends(?) September 3

According to ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley, non-OEM customers might get their hands on "Fiji" until the CEDIA Expo conference in early September. Last year, Microsoft rolled out extenders for Windows Vista Media Center during CEDIA.

Answers Wanted

If you know anything about Vista's new TV Pack, we'd love to hear from you.

Illustration courtesy of EndgadgetHD.

COMMENTS:3
TAGS: vista, microsoft, Windows Media Center, Fiji, TV Pack
COMMENTS
avatar I want to see the ability

Submitted by Caboose on Sat, 07/26/2008 - 11:52pm

 I want to see the ability for Windows Media Centre to use codecs and plugins that are already installed (DivX, XVid, etc) and not requre multiple packages with special installers to get them to work.

 Also, multiple TV-Tuner support would be nice. Picture in Picture as well as record on one channel and watch on another would be a welcome addition!

 I'd also like to see, the ability to view video files by file-name only and not a crappy thumbnail from some obscure time in the video file. That would make finding movies, tv shows and videos that have been obtained outside of Windows Media Player  much easier! Oh, and fast forwarding and rewinding of those files would be a nice addition. As it stands, if you want to FF or RW a DivX or XVid file, you have to use the "chapter skip" button.

Maybe a playlist feature for video files would be nice. And the ability to listen to internet radio streams easier!

Ok, I think I'm done now!

 

-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-

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avatarThe true question is, why

Submitted by Digital-Storm on Thu, 07/24/2008 - 7:26am

The true question is, why would I care for the Fiji update?

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avatarFiji adds several new

Submitted by tarrant07 on Fri, 08/15/2008 - 1:54pm

Fiji adds several new features. However, the most salient one in my mind is Clear QAM support. No more beta plugins from Hauppauge or AverMedia is required. With Fiji, Clear QAM digital cable support is built-in. Vista Media Center will now identify digital tuners, treat them separate from analog tuners, and be able to find these QAM channels in webguide.

 Unfortunately, one major problem with Fiji is that DVR-MS files are history ... now all recorded TV goes into a new file format called WTV. Although this has been speculated to be just a different wrapper, the problem is non-Fiji Vista installations won't recognize this file format and will not be able to play it. Nor will Windows Media Player on non-Fiji Vista or WinXP systems. Nor will DVRMSToolbox, or other commercial skip add-in utilities. This may change with time, but right now the WTV format effective traps the content onto the patched systems.

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