Last week Microsoft officially took the wraps off of its next operating system, Windows 7. The blogoshpere is buzzing from a number of the announced platforms and features. For some, Windows Azure represents an alignment of Microsoft's internet services and operating system strategies. For others the new taskbar, with color hot-track shows potential for enhancing the user experience, in appreciable ways. For me, the next version of Windows Media Center is looking like a really good party. Microsoft employee Charlie Owen has a blog post detailing some of the new features of Microsoft's media managing front-end, Windows Media Center. The above is a new look at the new 'now playing' screen for music. Look familiar? If you're a Zune user, you'll recognize it as the non-enhanced 'now playing' screen from the Zune software. From what I read, the two could be cousins.

While Charlie makes no mention of any extended functionality, say pulling high resolution pictures of the track artist and dynamically lighting them, I wonder if what we see now is all that we will see in the final product. Another cool feature is native support for AC3, H.264, DivX, and XviD file formats. On the flip side, perhaps the support for AC3, DivX and XviD, the latter two of which are really container formats, could be an indication of what's coming to Zune. If you're a Media Center lover, the post is worth a read. If not, you just may become a Media Center lover after reading Charlie's post.