so this might not be as important as other things people want out of fiji, but to me it is because i use it alot for my music, will fiji have an update or fix to the pixelated 200x200 album art?? i hope so, i know theres workarounds but id rather just have a clean fix, 200x200 just looks so horrible on my screen. please fix that in fiji and id be happy.

I would like to know this as well.

Same here, at the moment its not a big deal for me as im still using a crappy crt.
I hope it is fixed up before the lcd makes a home in my lounge.

I guess that with this fix we may also get to the point where when you set an image as the album art, it stays there? I have albumartlarge.jpg in all my music folders. I use UrlToCoverArt to set all references for album art to this file.

However, VMC seems to like messing with this and doing some very obscure things with the displayed result.

This would be a great thing to stop in the next update.

Cheers,
Eddy

yep i too agree, 200x200 album art just looks damn horrible on a good sized lcd tv!, got my fingers crossed that fiji fixes this, if not then im just going to have to bite the bullet and use one of the many 3rd party fixers cos i dont think i can stand it much longer :-).

paul.

anyword on this, anyone...anyone?? microsoft?? dont make a grown man beg...haha

It's quite simply a disgrace Microsoft didnt fix this years ago.

I do not have any knowledge about what's in fiji, but from all the news I've seen the changes are only TV related. So I would be pleasently surpriced if the music section got fixed.
I speculate that MS might be doing something in the music section once the combine the Media Player, Media Center and Zune team and then come up with some new stuff for Windows 7.

It's a shame that the music section work as poorly as it does in Vista with low resolution cover art, slow performance (although better than MCE 2005) and limited views and navigation options.
- Chr

Agreed! Would really, really like to see this fixed in the next update (whatever/whenever that might be).

It's really sad to have high-resolution cover art be displayed by EVERY OTHER program, yet still be limited to "fuzzy" 200x200 images in Vista Media Center. With LCD/DLP/Plasma so commonplace now, which really highlight how awful the low resolution cover art is, it's a shame this has yet to still be addressed.

The resolution of those images is actually limited to what we get from our data provider.  We are looking at ways to acquire higher quailty images for future releases, but we don't have any solid plans to announce because those conversations are still under way.

Jeff, with all due respect, that is simply not true. While I do understand that AMG's images are only 200x200, the bigger problem is where WMP downgrades an image. In WMP, you can drag-n-drop a 500px image and it will be reduced to 200px. This was never a problem in MCE05 using WMP11 but is a problem in Vista. And it's been a problem far too long as seen here. I feel a "solid plan" should become an "immediate plan". As a system builder, this problem has been a "deal breaker" on many potential Media Center sales. And after 1.5 years of Vista being on the market, I'm tired of telling people that "they're working on it" when I don't really know if they are.

HighDef:

Jeff, with all due respect, that is simply not true. While I do understand that AMG's images are only 200x200...

Which part isn't true?  You just confirmed the same statement that you said was incorrect.

Ok... I re-read your post and I retract the "simply not true" statement. But images should not be constrained to 200px when a higher res image is applied, plain and simple. I did jump the gun in my above post but this has been a real problem that seems to be swept under the rug and I'm touchy about it. It has been ignored far too long. AMG does provides 200px images but why does VMC/WMP downsize higher resolutions? The bigger question is when will this get fixed?

JeffTucker – MSFT:

The resolution of those images is actually limited to what we get from our data provider.  We are looking at ways to acquire higher quailty images for future releases, but we don't have any solid plans to announce because those conversations are still under way.

What about album art for those people that embed it in an mp3 file, or who purchase mp3 files with higher resolution? I use 600x600 (minumum) as the resolution for album art that I use in my songs, however this gets grossly downsampled when displaying. Windows Media Player displays this "high resolution" art just fine, yet the Music Libray in VMC downsamples.

This post, as well as this one, give great examples of VMC vs. WMP, and this post is one example where a Microsoft employee has recognized this issue almost a year ago with no updates.

I see that we were actually talking about two issues.  the first was the quailty of the images we get from AMG.  I think we are all clear on that one, as it was the focus of my last response.

The second issue is about the downgrading of higher quality images NOT sent down by AMG.  I spoke with the feature team about this today, and I now have a better understanding.  Unfortunately, I can't tell you when this experience will be improved, but I can at least tell you that the PM is actively working on this for the next Windows release.  No promises, and I know you heard this before... but we DO hear you and we ARE working towards a solution.  I've encouraged the team to communicate more information directly when they can.

Not great news, but I wanted to share what I have.