Microsoft Presents Details About Windows Vista's Audio & Video Innovations

Microsoft unveiled yesterday at NAB2006 (National Association of Broadcasters convention) the Windows Vista innovations through which the company hopes it will transform the OS into the ultimate PC platform for creation, distribution and consumer experience.

"With Windows Vista, we went back to the drawing board to create a premier platform for audio and video. Whether you are a music producer, post-production house or television studio, you will find that Windows Vista is an incredibly powerful tool for the future of content creation, delivery and playback," said Amir Majidimehr, corporate vice president of Windows Digital Media Division at Microsoft.

Here are some important audio/video improvements:

- Glitch resilience: Windows Vista includes the ability to raise the priority of audio and video processes, therefore delivering a platform that is far more glitch resilient.

- High fidelity: the OS will have 32-bit floating point by default in the core of the audio system, allow for much higher-quality digital signal processing and support for up to 144 dB signal-to-noise ratio with bit-for-bit sample level accuracy.

- Device roles: A single PC may have several devices or peripherals connected to it to facilitate each of these scenarios. Windows Vista will ease the setup of these devices by providing device roles in three initial categories: general, music and movies, and communication. This will allow specific applications to output content through specific devices, for example, e-mail alerts through a headset or music playback through high-fidelity surround-sound speakers.

- Per-application volume. Windows Vista will offer per-application volume control, so system sounds and other applications can be easily differentiated.

Aside from these, Microsoft also made the first demonstration of the Windows Media Center Presentation Layer, which allows developers to leverage the same rendering technologies that are in Windows Media Center and the Microsoft .NET Framework to create visually stunning "ten-foot" applications that are easier to build, manage and deploy, and Hosted WinFX XAML Browser Applications (XBAP), which allow Media Center developers to leverage the power of the Microsoft WinFX platform and tools to create rich interactive services for the home.