Chris Lanier's Blog

News, Analysis, and Opinion on Microsoft Digital Media Technologies (and TGB News!)

Short Bits: Vaio LT, Album Art, HD DVD, Plug-ins

In October, Sony will start selling their Vaio LT HD PC/TV.  It’s an all-in-one PC 22-inch LCD TV with a PC built-in.  There will be a standard and an HD model that includes Blu-ray and CableCARD, I’m assuming only a single tuner though.  Cool idea, but I don’t see this pushing too many units.  Sony, like HP has a few innovative PC concepts out there but I don’t think the general public is really ready for something like this.

A week or so ago Jason Dunn wrote an article about Microsoft not getting embedded album art.   I agree, I’ve been struggling with some album art recently and it’s ridiculous that I have to spend time troubleshooting and thinking about something like album art.  Not only that, the either Windows Media Player team is behind the times.  Microsoft is concentrating too much on thing like the Zune and online services and not putting enough time into their flagship player.  Windows Media Player needs a lot of work, and it seems very little gets done with every release.

There have been tons of HD DVD deals out in the past few days.  First of all, if you pick up a Toshiba HD-A2, HD-A20 or HD-XA2 at Amazon you also get five free HD DVDs via snail mail and an addition three free as part on a promotion that ends on the September 23.  Figuring $20 a disc, you are basically getting a HD DVD player for free or really cheap.  There is also a deal where you can get the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive for $180 and get nine HD DVDs with that!

And lastly for a free plug-in notes, MCEBuddy is a DVRMSToolbox-like application that could be considered to have a more understandable UI for beginners.  Looks pretty cool.  Converts files to other formats, remove commercials, etc.

Ryan Hurst got around to updating one of the most popular applications for Media Center, My Netflix is now updated for a better Vista install.  Other changes include the images and bug fixes.

Cross Posted from Chris Lanier's Blog at http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/

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