If you have a digital camera, you'll appreciate that XP directly supports USB and serial connections to most popular digital cameras. This feature lets you easily transfer digital photos to your computer. In addition to direct PC-to-camera link-ups, XP supports several SmartMedia readers. You can pull the SmartMedia card out of your camera and insert it into the reader to transfer images to your XP system.
Although direct support for digital cameras is a major improvement, XP offers even more digital media support. The My Pictures folder gives you several options for viewing and arranging your photos—for example, both a thumbnail view and filmstrip view of the images contained in a selected folder. You can also organize the contents of the My Pictures folder into a screen-saver slide show. You can password-protect the slide show, use selected photos from different directories, and time the transition between the different images.
Another great feature of XP's digital media support is the Photo Printing Wizard, which you access from the Picture Tasks menu in the My Pictures folder. The Photo Printing Wizard displays a thumbnail view of the images in a folder. You simply select the check box next to each image that you want to print. Then, the wizard prompts you to choose among several styles of photo formats. For example, you can print a full page, an 8" x 10" photo, two 5" x 7" photos, four 3.5" x 5" photos, or a contact sheet with 45 images per page. The Photo Printing Wizard automatically rotates the photos and crops them to fit the selected layout.
One of the coolest new features of the My Pictures folder lets you order prints online. Using the Order Prints Wizard, which you access from the Picture Tasks menu, you can send selected images across the Web to participating photo processing services and get professional prints of your images. The service mails the processed prints back to you.
The XP digital media features aren't limited to digital photo cameras. XP includes support for IEEE-1394, which lets you connect directly to your Digital Video (DV) camera without third-party software. XP also includes Microsoft's Movie Maker software, which lets you capture and edit digital video. Movie Maker can capture input from Windows Media, AVI, and MP3 files, and can output audio and video in Windows Media format.
The Music Experience
XP's digital music capabilities are every bit as exciting as its photo and video features. The My Music folder now acts as a digital media repository, which lets you sort, manage, and search for music based on its metadata rather than forcing you to use Windows Explorer to locate and decipher hard disk file names. For example, the My Music folder can display album art, as well as the title, in the Windows Explorer pane. You can search for music by using meaningful information such as song title and artist.
XP further enhances the music experience with improvements to Windows Media Player (WMP). The new version of WMP, now called Media Player for Windows XP (MPXP), provides a host of new music and entertainment capabilities.
Like earlier versions of WMP, MPXP supports playback of MP3 and Windows Media Audio (WMA) files. Using the new WMA file formats, MPXP provides near-CD quality at 48Kbps, which lets MPXP store nearly three times as much music in the same space as the comparable MP3 format.
You can use MPXP to burn CDs and to create custom play lists. MPXP supports both copying music files from audio CD to the hard disk and writing WMA files to make your own music CDs with XP's integrated support for writing to CD-Rs, CD-RWs, and DVD-RAM devices. MPXP incorporates a Portable Device window that you can use to write to storage devices such as a CD-R or CD-RW drive—or you can output to a portable device that supports the WMA format, such as Compaq's iPAQ, Creative Technology's NOMAD, Rio's Volt, or Sony's Vaio Music Clip.
Out of the box, MPXP supports only writing in the WMA format. However, Microsoft is now shipping an add-on pack that includes an MP3 encoder, which will let third parties add an MPXP plugin that supports ripping MP3 CDs.
The Home Theater Experience
Enhanced TV support is one of the home theater features hidden in XP. Using a technology termed "Microsoft TV Technologies," XP provides the ability to integrate television into Windows. Microsoft TV Technologies lets you add a High-Definition Television (HDTV) adapter to your PC, along with a third-party TV application that lets you watch TV on your XP PC while simultaneously browsing the Web or performing other PC tasks.
XP provides the essential support for HDTV output, but it lacks applications for changing channels. Third-party TV application software fills this role. This fusion of TV and the computer could be the basis of a new generation of special entertainment devices.
The Gaming Experience For an enhanced gaming experience, XP provides support for the latest high-performance 4X Advanced Graphics Processing (AGP) graphics cards. Additionally, XP supports the latest DirectX 8.0 gaming API, which provides improved performance, better audio playback, and improved pixel rendering.
XP's revamped DOS support also lets it play old DOS games that either didn't play under Win2K or NT, or that required the system modal DOS-box under Windows Me or Win98.
XP provides a new experience for the home and SOHO user. The new interface makes the power of Windows more accessible than ever before for novice and occasional Windows users, and its Network Setup Wizard makes it easy to step through advanced networking tasks. However, some of XP's best features are in the arena of digital photos and music, where XP improves the end user experience and raises the bar for digital device and PC integration.
Article Courtesy of ConnectedHome Online
