Love Windows 7

　

With many versions of Windows, Microsoft chops features as it gets closer to release.

With Windows 7, Microsoft has actually added a few features as it has gotten closer to
launch. One of the most intriguing is a feature that debuted with the most recent

allows a user to stream media from one PC to another over the Internet, a la the Slingbox.

There are some noteworthy limitations. The streaming feature works with unprotected video
and music files, so one can’t watch video from iTunes or other copy-protected content.

Also the

as the feature is
known, requires both computers to be running
Windows 7 and requires some setup work. That
said, the feature is nice for the scenarios and
locations from which it works. It seems
particularly well suited to a Netbook or laptop
user that wants to listen to some music or view
some photos that they don’t have on their
on-the-go machine.

To get a better sense of the product, I
decided to put it through its paces. The feature
didn’t seem to work when one of the PCs was
attached to CNET’s corporate network, but worked
fine when I went to a coffee house and streamed
the media off of a Windows PC at home. (The
remote media streaming requires the PC that
houses the content to be part of a home
network.)

In addition to
music and pictures, Windows 7 also supports
video streaming, provided the content is
unprotected, such as the HD wildlife clip
that ships with Windows 7.

Set-up is not overly complex, but nor is it
elegant by any means. To get the PC ready, you
have to turn on Internet streaming in Windows
Media Player. The other piece is associating
both machines with the same Windows Live ID.
(The feature may eventually support other ID
providers, but for now it’s only Windows Live.)

Getting up and running required downloading a
Windows Live ID Assistant from the Internet,
which sends you to a browser. Again, this wasn’t
super-technical, but it would have been nice if
it did all that without opening a browser and
requiring so many clicks.

Once I thought I had everything set up, I
decided to put it to the test. Rather than go
too far from home, I headed to Nervous Dog
Coffee, my favorite spot for getting caffeinated
and

I started with what I thought was the easiest
task–opening a photo. The library showed up
quickly but opening the photo was slow. Also
unexpected was the fact that instead of just
opening that photo, it launched a slideshow of
the whole folder.

From there I moved on to music, streaming the
Indigo Girls album “All that We Let In.” It
sounded good, with no noticeable skips, although
I could only listen in short bursts as I forgot
to bring along headphones.

I then moved onto video, playing a built-in
HD clip of wildlife footage that came as part of
Windows 7. The clip played with its accompanying
audio, though the video was a bit jerky in
places.

Satisfied with the results, I packed up the
PC and headed into the office. Interestingly,
the media-sharing feature didn’t appear to work
on the same PC once I got into the office. I
tried labeling my office network as both a home
and an office network, but perhaps a network
firewall or something got in the way.

TV shows recorded
in Windows Media Center can also be
streamed, although the quality and
performance seemed to vary.

Once I switched from a hard-wire connection
to CNET’s public wireless network, I was once
again able to see content stored on the computer
at home. I was even able to stream a Sesame
Street episode that I had set to start recording
after I left the house.

The quality of that viewing experience varied
dramatically. In the best cases, the TV showed
up in a small but passable window, while in a
couple cases it was in a tiny window or took an
unacceptably long time to buffer.

Microsoft says a variety of factors go into
the size and quality of the video stream,
including the characteristics of the content,
the available bandwidth, and the processing
power of the serving computer.

At its best, the ability to watch recorded TV
is handy; it’s not quite the live TV option that
Slingbox provides, but still could be useful for
road warriors stuck in an airport or at the
hotel. But sometimes the delay was enough to
send me over to Hulu for sure.

Overall, I found the media-streaming feature
to be a nice addition, but both the limitations
and the somewhat complicated set-up leaves me
the feeling that it will be the enthusiast
rather than the mainstream user that gets around
to trying this out.