Vista Beta 2

[Dan L]

...now with upgrade path from XP/MCE :smashin:

Has anyone tried it yet? Last time I tried it on my HTPC it was a catastrophe :rotfl:

Wondering if (in particular) the Media Center side of things is working a little better with codec support and Live TV...

[EliteAV]

I had a play around with Vista build 5384.4 yesterday (on a clean partition).

From a stability and performance perspective, whilst this wasnt fantastic (I have a dual core 3800+ Athlon box with 2GB RAM), it was a big improvement on the Feb CTP build (5308). The only time I saw a BSOD this time was when trying to installing the latest NVidia Vista graphics drivers - I know these are beta, but I have never seen a system brought to its knees so quickly! I dont know if its just shoddy code or an anomally with my system - I have 2 monitors driven from an Asus 6600 PCI Express card+on board 6150 chipset). However, the MS provided graphics driver isnt too bad in terms of performance.

I have been using WMP 11 for about a week anyway (via the Beta 2 release) so already knew what this component of Vista would look like. It has a couple of performance issues when showing album art by year, but the instant search capability is very neat. MS has said that improving the search performance was one of the top things on their todo list for WMP 11 & it definately looks like they are getting there (WMP 10 & previous versions before that used to hold library meta data in an XML file which didnt make for very fast searches; it looks like this has now been replaced with a proper database (SQL) file store).

The new UI in Media Center certainly takes some getting used to - the horizontal navigation doesnt feel right when using a keyboard, however, it does feel more intuitive when using the remote. To be honest, I couldnt find any new functionality, most of the changes appear to be cosmetic, however, I think some of the font/labelling changes & relocation of the music search function have made the UI a little busy and a step backwards from the simplicity of the UI in MCE 2005.

I didnt spend a huge amount of time playing with MCE in Vista, but was able to get my Terratec Cinergy DVB-T dual tuner card working without any problems (I just installed the XP driver) & the same tuner hack I used in XP (to limit station scanning to the Bluebell Hill transmitter) appeared to work as before. One new change is that Vista provides a DVD decoder out of the box so there is no need to buy Nvidia Purevideo etc.

The only sour note so far is that the MS supplied "High Definition" audio driver only support analogue out (so not sure how this qualifies as high definition!). Other postings on the net have suggested just installing the relevant vendor XP drivers (for your soundcard or onboard audio). However, I am not convinced this will work for digital audio out - it certainly didnt for me. I was able to install the Soundmax driver for my motherboard (Asus A8N VM CSM), but the resulting audio via digital coax out was garbled. I suspect that this is one area that has been reworked by MS, so vendors will need to write new drivers.

I will spend more time digging into Vista, but this build certainly inspires more confidence than the Feb (5308) build :)

[RecordablDVDfan]

What ver no is beta 2 ? I have 5381 works fine but no auduo drivers

[t-force]

Since I've just picked up a new HD, I was thinking of trying the Vista beta on my old one. Is the current Beta a readily available download a la Office 2007 and WMP 11?

[RecordablDVDfan]

Since I've just picked up a new HD, I was thinking of trying the Vista beta on my old one. Is the current Beta a readily available download a la Office 2007 and WMP 11?

Has wmp 11 but not office I think. Also the search for drivers from the internet option actually works

Btw if you have a moterised satellite setup there is a video loop of a guy showing all the new features of Vista. On Arabsat 26 east channel is called super tech on 11.938 V

[Dan L]

Since I've just picked up a new HD, I was thinking of trying the Vista beta on my old one. Is the current Beta a readily available download a la Office 2007 and WMP 11?

If you mean, can it be downloaded by the general public, then no.

[chedmaster]

Media center on Vista is rubbish, using my experience of build 5381.

Absolutely horrible.

Vista wouldn't accept my custom resolutions from powerstrip either.

So I just downloaded a Vista transformation pack for xp :thumbsup:

[Stiggy]

How easy is it to setup a dual boot with XP/MCE? On an early build I couldn't work out how to do this.

[Uridium]

Just create a new partition on your XP install (using Partition magic or similar)

then shutdown your PC pop your Vista DVD into the drive and boot from it. in the setup just choose to install on your new partition, the setup will create the new Vista bootloader for you.

Take a backup of your XP install before you start though!

[t-force]

If you mean, can it be downloaded by the general public, then no.

Yes, that was what I meant. Arse! Oh well...