Microsoft's next generation OS now called "Vista" may not support HD-DVD right out of the box, when it is released in the last half of this year, even though they are solidly behind the format. Too bad, as a lot of people are anxious to use the Media Center portion, that will be available in many iterations of the new operating system, for high definition content. At least one of the several projected versions, this one dubbed "Windows Vista Home Premium", will replace the present  Media Center Edition.

A Microsoft spokesperson says, "Vista's architecture will recognize both HD DVD and Blu-ray DVD; however, current plans for Media Center support of either of these formats is unknown at this time. We do know that there will be a great HD DVD and Blu-ray DVD experience for Media Center either at Vista launch or soon after as either an extensible application or natively in MCE."

You can find the rest of the article here at the CEPro Community. On a bright note, for those of us that have not lost the affection for DVD, the OS will support Mt. Rainier packet writing, giving you the equivalent of a 4.7 or 8.4 gigabyte floppy! The writing scheme will work natively with all drives that support it and any media. So you might want to keep this in mind if you intend to upgrade your writer in the last half and make sure it will support Mt. Rainier, or can be upgraded to do so through a firmware update.

Source: CEPro Community