Windows 7: Release Candidate 1 Preview
by Ryan Smith and Gary Key on May 5, 2009 11:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Windows Media : New Codecs, New Looks, New Features
One of the more annoying aspects of setting up a new Windows computer is how little media Windows can play right out of the box. With Vista Home Premium there is support for MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video, MP3 and AC3 audio, and Windows Media Audio and Video. What has been lacking however is support for more modern video codecs such as MPEG-4 ASP and H.264, along with AAC audio and the container formats these use. This has put Windows well behind most Linux distributions, which include media players capable of playing everything under the sun, and even Mac OS X which includes full H.264/AAC/MP4 support through QuickTime.
With Windows 7 that’s all changing. Windows 7 includes codecs for all the above-mentioned formats and their containers, along with AAC+ (commonly used for streaming audio). This gives Windows 7 the ability to play most common media formats, notably the old standard of Xvid/DivX (MPEG-4 ASP) encoded video inside of an AVI container, and the new standard of H.264 inside of an MP4 container. At this point the only relatively common things Windows 7 can’t read are Matroska containers (which usually contain H.264 video and AC3 audio), DivX3 video, and anything OGG (sorry guys).
The new decoders are available as DirectShow, DirectX Media Object, and Media Foundation codecs, allowing new and old programs alike to access them. This includes both Microsoft applications like Windows Media Center, and 3rd party applications like Media Player Classic Home Cinema. Oh, and did we mention that the MPEG-2 and H.264 decoders are multi-threaded and DXVA accelerated?
Windows Media Player playing a 30Mb H.264 clip entirely in software without breaking a sweat
In our informal testing thus far, once we installed a Matroska splitter we have been unable to find anything that Windows Media Player can’t play. It even manages to play newer QuickTime MOV files, as a result of the MP4 container being based off of the MOV container. The performance of the codecs looks good too. Since the H.264 codec is multi-threaded, it had no issue playing back our 30Mb 1080P test clip even without DXVA acceleration - this clip tends to kill most software codecs. For MPEG-4 ASP, we need to investigate the quality a bit more. It's looking like the Microsoft codecs don't have any post-processing features, which wouldn't surprise us but would put it behind DivX/Xvid in quality.
This brings us to Windows Media Player, which is up to version 12 as of Windows 7. There are few GUI changes to speak of, but the same cannot be said for features. With the aforementioned new codecs, WMP gains the ability to read more shared libraries than just WMP’s; in particular iTunes libraries are now supported, with the exception of songs protected with FairPlay DRM.
Microsoft has also taken a page out of the playbook of media streaming applications like Simplify Media, with the addition of internet streaming capabilities. Currently this requires a Windows Live ID for authentication/security purposes, and only WMP12 works as a client. We know that Windows 7 includes some basic audio/video transcoding features as part of the Media Foundation, and presumably WMP12 is using these features to serve up media. We haven’t had a chance to test this specific feature yet, so we’ll have to get back to it with the final version of Windows 7.
WMP Internet Streaming Configuration
Meanwhile Windows Media Center (7MC), Microsoft’s 10ft UI for HTPC use, has received a much bigger overhaul for Windows 7. The GUI has been given a minor reworking (it’s best described as more Zune-like) but it’s the guts that make all the difference. With the addition of H.264 support to Windows 7, 7MC is now suitable for TV reception in more environments besides North American cable and OTA TV. We’ve previously mentioned DirecTV as a likely addition in the future, and this would also extend to services like IPTV and Freeview, both of which are starting to use H.264.
Windows Media Center 7 UI
ClearQAM support is also officially in for 7MC, which means users of the HDHomeRun and other ClearQAM-capable tuners can now pull in unencrypted cable TV networks and watch them on 7MC.
Finally, as we mentioned previously Microsoft has added some transcode abilities to Windows 7 via the Media Foundation Transcode interface. There’s nothing here that will knock your socks off, but via MFT Windows 7 can encode material into a format suitable for mobile devices – that being H.264 video and AAC audio inside of an MP4 container. With mobile devices being the focus of this feature, it should come as no surprise that the H.264 encoder is fairly limited in scope. It can do Baseline profile at SD resolutions up to 1.5Mbps, which is good enough for mobile devices but is not any kind of competition for x264 or other full-feature H.264 encoders.
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ssj4Gogeta - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
Exactly what SkullOne said. I also use Linux and know in what areas it's better than Windows. But I also know there are so many other areas in which it's a pain to use.SkullOne - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
Spoken like a true jaded Linux fanboi. People like you are the reason Linux will never be mainstream. You think you're so high and mighty (or more secure) when you're not.Thanks for the laugh. I'd love for you to back up ANY of your comments with facts.
Disclaimer: I use Linux and Windows every day in production environments. They both have their place in the world.
snookie - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
This blaming of Microsoft's Vista woes on Apple and a few commercials is just ridiculous. Most people pay no attention to such things those few that see them. It also has nothing to do with why Vista was a flop in the consumer space and an even bigger flop in the corporate marketplace. Certainly nothing to do with so many companies offering XP downgrades. Vista is a lousy product plain and simple and if there is any marketing fault it is Windows with their arcane multiple editions at ever increasing prices designed to milk customers. People aren't stupid even if they are computer novices. They know when they have been had, something is difficult to use, or not reliable. This is the result of years of piling layer upon layer of code on an ever expanding code base with no effort to start over and offer a clean efficient OS. The ONLY thing Windows 7 has over Vista is the interface is simplified and gets out of your way better. It can SEEM to run faster all it wants but test after test shows Windows 7 is barely faster than Vista at many tasks and in fact slower at some. Microsoft is in real trouble here because years of cruft code have left a huge amount of unusable code that consumes resources, adds instability, and provides entry to all sorts of malware. There is no way this codebase can be made to work efficiently with the quad and higher core procs that will be even more common in the next few years and what is Microsoft going to do then? They have three failed ad campaigns under their belt so their years of lying to their customers has fallen flat and corporate customers long ago stopped believing anything Microsoft said which is why open source that doesn't lock you in is becoming more and more prevalent. Microsoft has met the enemy and it is them.I notice you run Microsoft ads btw.
ssj4Gogeta - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
I know so many people who haven't even TRIED Vista once and they keep telling other people how bad it is.formulav8 - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
I agree almost 100%. I have customers who wants to make sure they have/get windows xp because vista is so bad. If you ask them why, they basically say its because a friend of a friends father said it was slow.I do know one of the biggest downfalls for Microsoft and Vista was allowing Intel to pressure them into getting Vista Certified compatability with those trashy integrated chipsets of Intel. So many users have those trash Intel xtreme/gma video chipsets and they had very bad Aero interface performance.
Anyways, I use both Vista and Windows7 daily. I like Vista better than XP overall and like Windows7 thus far compared to Vista.
I really think Windows7 will end up being one of the best oses made, even when compared to osx and windows xp.
Jason
vectorm12 - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
Personally I never took to windows XP nor vista(had it been tecnologically possible I would still have been on WinNT 4.0), however as I bought a new PC I hit the RAM cap of 32bit XP Pro and therefore felt I had no decent choice than to move to 64bit Vista.My Vista experience has been far from great, reinstalls, crap drivers from nVidia and ATI not to mention a bunch of other third parties. However it hasn't been all bad, vista has quite a few ideas that just didn't work out just the way I would have liked.
Look at the save file dialogs for example where you actually had to click a button to browse directories other than the default one.
I've now been running on Win7 x64 since build 7k reinstalling almost every time a new version has been leaked and I'd say most of the things that bugged me with Vista has been corrected.
At this point the only thing I still want for Win7 is the "old" style control panel and an integration of the "administrator tools" into the control panel.
Looking at the big picture I say Win7 (even in BETA) is the best modern OS Microsoft has produced. The performance issues of Vista have been dealt with to a large degree. Drivers seem to work better and the most annoying GUI issues have been dealt with.
All Microsoft can do now to make me feel completely satisfied with my computing experience over the last few years is give me a BIG rebate on the upgrade to Windows7 from my old Vista licence.
johnsonx - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
I just upgraded my XP-era Vista box (2.2ghz single core A64, 2GB RAM, VIA AGP mobo, X1950Pro) to Windows 7 tonight, and it was absolutely painless. It certainly seems faster than Vista, in particular I notice that my e-mail client and web browser launch and become ready much more quickly.I'm finding the new UI features to be actually useful as well, rather than Vista's pointless eye candy. I often have 6 or 7 browser tabs and several e-mail windows open, along with another couple of apps, and the new task bar makes it much easier to switch among them. I can see if I have any new e-mail just by moving the mouse over the client icon on the taskbar, no need to even click on it. Aero-Peek makes gadgets more usable too, since you can see them without minimizing every window. AeroSnap is great too. Only AeroShake defies explanation, but perhaps time will prove that one too.
I was never a Vista hater, though it certainly had it's frustrations. But it only took me 20 minutes with Windows 7 to never want to touch another Vista box again.
I was initially concerned that ATI's Windows 7 driver only supports cards back to the HD2000 series (presumably because the WDDM 1.1 driver model requires DX10 class hardware, which my X1950Pro is not), but the MS provided driver had no problems with Half-Life 2 (the only game I happen to have installed on this box) or any of the fancy GUI features.
The only weirdness so far as that at last boot up Windows told me a driver for Trend Micro Internet Security was being blocked due to a compatibility problem with Windows 7. That's understandable, except for the fact that I don't have any Trend Micro product installed, nor has one ever been installed in the past. It wouldn't tell me exactly what driver it was complaining about though, so I can't investigate further (I suspect some log somewhere will tell me exactly what driver it blocked).
One taskbar UI incontinuity: so much now works by simply moving the mouse over the various items, it suddenly seems odd to have to actually click on the start menu to get it to open.
johnsonx - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
ok, it turns out the offending driver was TMCOMM.SYS, and it really was from Trend Micro. I have a vague recollection of running an online scan once a couple years ago (trying to scan a friend's external drive), so I guess it was trend micro and it left that driver around.As with most such things, the blocking event was neatly logged in the system event log.
thebeastie - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
Wow, this new OS looks like Vista but with all the latest patches,IE8 and DirectX11. Then just a few cosmetic graphics changes.I AM EXCITED!
Come on what else did you expect? Maybe its something that has stuck deep in side people since they were kids around new PCs but when it comes to Microsoft new OSes people are just getting more and more nieve.
thebeastie - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
More tests appear to be slower in Windows 7 then Vista etc.Things like reltek sound performance can be put to just as much to the 3rd party drivers then anything else.
I can't believe how many people I have talked to that use but hate Vista and expect Windows server to be light on its feet as XP but with the features of Vista, they are behaving as its something they could bet their life on.
What does it take for people to get some some technical intuition?
I mean thats what people really really really need here.