Chapter 9. Digital Media in Windows Vista

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Easier AutoPlay Defaults

• Windows Photo Gallery

• What's New in Windows Media Player 11

• New Media Center Features

• Digital Audio in Windows Vista

• DVD Authoring

The English language is a veritable factory of new words and phrases. Inventive wordsmiths in all fields are constantly forging new additions to the lexicon by blending words, attaching morphemic tidbits to existing words, and creating neologisms out of thin air. Some of these new words strike a chord in popular culture and go through what I call the "cachet to cliché" syndrome. In other words, the word is suddenly on the lips of cocktail party participants and water-cooler conversationalists everywhere, and on the fingertips of countless columnists and editorialists. As soon as the word takes root, however, the backlash begins. Rants of the if-I-hear-the-word-x-one-more-time-I'll-scream variety start to appear, Lake Superior State University includes the word in its annual list of phrases that should be stricken from the language, and so on.

The word multimedia went through this riches-to-rags scenario a few of years ago. Buoyed by the promise of media-rich interactive applications and games, techies and nontechies alike quickly made multimedia their favorite buzzword. It didn't take long, however, for the bloom to come off the multimedia rose.

Part of the problem was that when multimedia first became a big deal in the early '90s, the average computer just wasn't powerful enough to handle the extra demands made on the system. Not only that, but Windows support for multimedia was sporadic and half-hearted. That has all changed now, however. The typical PC sold today has more than enough horsepower to handle typical multimedia-related tasks, and Windows Vista has a number of slick new features that let developers and end users alike incorporate multimedia seamlessly into their work. Now it doesn't much matter that the word multimedia has more or less been replaced by the phrase digital mediawhat really matters is that people can get down to the more practical matter of creating exciting media-enhanced documents.