While Microsoft is hard at work building the upcoming edition of Windows Media Center, codenamed Fiji, it is also focusing on enabling developers to create third-party applications for Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate. All you need is Windows Media Center in Vista, Windows Media Center Software Development Kit (SDK) and .NET Framework 2.0 and you are set to go. Additionally, Microsoft is also providing via MSDN a resource designed to supplement the information available to developers through the Windows Media Center SDK Help and the Windows Media Center SDK Help documentation.

Time Travel with Windows Media Center in Windows Vista is an article authored by Stephen Toub, Technical Editor for MSDN Magazine, and it "discusses writing background applications for Windows Media Center in Windows Vista, and demonstrates how to write an application that allows a user to enter a time code on the remote control, causing Windows Media Center to jump to that location in the current media playback. This is a revised version of an article originally written about Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 in April 2005."

The bottom line is that Windows Media Center in Vista can be regarded from both the perspective of "a product and an extensible platform." In this sense, developers are able to alter the responses returned by Windows Media Center in accordance with customized scenarios. Windows Media Center Presentation Layer applications are the first input target for custom code.

"There are three distinct Windows Media Center Presentation Layer application types you can create using the Windows Media Center platform: Local, Web, and Background. Windows Media Center Presentation Layer local applications consist of an installed managed code assembly and related files, and as a locally-installed application, it has access to all computer resources. These applications are explicitly launched by a user and typically interact with a user through interfaces written in Windows Media Center Markup Language (MCML)," Toub added, continuing to describe the way developers can integrate code with Windows Media Center in Windows Vista.