http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f2/Freeview-comingsoon.jpg+http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a3/Windows7logo.png

In one of my previous blogs I outlined the state and form of the new digital TV offering in New Zealand alnog with some of the trials that I had with the included software. To summarize, the use of the h.264 codec for NZ DVB-T posed numerous issues with both software and hardware. Vistas media center would not find a single digital channel and other solutions refused to talk to my tuner.

Windows 7 on the otherhand works flawlessly with the tuner and the h.264 encoding and is vastly more stable than the software that came with the tuner. This is kind of bittersweet though as originally h.264 support was supposed to be included in an update for Vista but now has been pushed to 7.

The EPG even seems to work, well as well as it worked with the included software. It will pick up the next three episode listings for a channel some of the time, I am guessing that this has something to do with how and when the full EPG data is broadcasted and if I left it on long enough it would pick up the weekly listings.

In summary the Windows 7 beta finally brings a propper Windows Media Center experience to New Zealand, and only about 10 years later than the US. I guess that we are ahead of the usual Microsoft schedule.