[doctorcilantro]

I have installed Win7 x64 onto 3 pc's on my network - HTPC, work pc and games pc. In all cases the installation went smoothly and quickly, there were no compatability issues other than the Logitech 1000i remote controller on the HTPC - I havent spent any time as yet looking into it.

Reports indicate that if a driver works on Vista then it should work on Win7.

Using Win7 on the HTPC is an improvement over Vista and XP media centre. The interface is smooth, larger icons, has better compatability with varying codecs, sharing media over networks, etc
.

My view is that Win7 is a more viable operating system that any prior Windows desktop platform.

Same here, 3 PCs including main HTPC and so far so good. x64 on the HTPC and x86 for the laptops.

The resolution independent font scaling feature is nice but I have had an issue using it with J. River (had to use XP mode).

 

[doctorcilantro]

Active Title Bar size in the Advanced Appearance settings can control icon size in the taskbar, but it usually mucks up the systray icons (which can be hidden of course). Not sure how small you can get with the icons.

I use ObjectDock on a 1920x1080 HTPC so I can have very large high res. icons right in the desktop for my family.

Edit - I just made my icons pretty small. It probably also depends on your resolution; this monitor at work is a decent size widescreen, maybe 1680x1050.

 

[doctorcilantro]

Being able to cycle through views in Explore with a toolbar button is great.

The customizable sidebar which allows you to link to custom locations is welcome too.

EVR can be done in XP I think, can't remember, but the Ehanced Video Renderer is native to Vista/7.

Windows 7 is recommended so that you can use the new Microsoft H.264 decoder ‘Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder’. So to all European readers, Windows 7 N is not the version you have to buy. For Windows XP users, consider upgrading to Vista/7.

http://nunnally.ahmygoddess.net/watching-h264-videos-using-dxva/

Lots of changes to the audio engine, some have provided hurdles to developers but overall the changes are good. No more K-mixer and I think WASAPI is like a native ASIO for Windows. Don't quote me on that though.

Audio stack architecture
Applications communicate with the audio driver through Sessions, and these Sessions are programmed through the Windows Audio Session API (WASAPI). In general, WASAPI operates in two modes. In exclusive mode (also called DMA mode), unmixed audio streams are rendered directly to the audio adapter and no other application's audio will play and signal processing has no effect. Exclusive mode is useful for applications that demand the least amount of intermediate processing of the audio data or those that want to output compressed audio data such as Dolby Digital, DTS or WMA Pro over S/PDIF. WASAPI exclusive mode is similar to kernel streaming in function, but no kernel mode programming is required. In shared mode, audio streams are rendered by the application and optionally applied per-stream audio effects known as Local Effects (LFX) (such as per-session volume control). Then the streams are mixed by the global audio engine, where a set of global audio effects (GFX) may be applied. Finally, they're rendered on the audio device.
The higher level APIs such as the Wavexxx APIs and DirectSound use shared mode, which results in pre-mixed PCM audio that is sent to the driver in a single format (in terms of sample rate, bit depth and channel count). This format is configurable by the end user through Control Panel.
After passing through WASAPI, all host-based audio processing, including custom audio processing, can take place (sample rate conversion, mixing, effects). Host-based processing modules are referred to as Audio Processing Objects, or APOs. All these components operate in user mode. The only portion of this architecture that runs in kernel mode is the audio driver (which contains the Port Class driver, the vendor Miniport driver and the vendor HAL). The Windows Kernel Mixer (KMixer) is completely gone. There is no direct path from DirectSound to the audio drivers; DirectSound and MME are emulated as Session instances. Since the whole point of DirectSound acceleration is to allow hardware to process unmixed audio content, DirectSound cannot be accelerated in this audio model. APIs such as ASIO and OpenAL are not affected.