Microsoft delivers Ultimate insult
MICROSOFT HAS finally gotten around to releasing a couple of those Windows Vista Ultimate Extras that buyers were promised at the beginning of the year, after heavy criticism in the past few days over their no-show.
Today sees Dreamscene hit the interweb, the feature that Gates touted at CES as being 'next generation'. It involves looping video as a desktop background, rather than simply a static picture.
Back in January, the Vole promised that those forking out the extra dosh for the 'Ultimate' edition of Vista would get plenty of extra goodies to download, making it worthwhile. Well, the Extras pack launched with Texas Hold'Em poker, which is fine, but then nothing new appeared. Dreamscene has been promised for months and only now makes an appearance, and added language packs are still MIA.
Also MIA, we'd suggest, is anything remotely useful or worth investing the extra money on. If we'd spent our cash on Ultimate, we'd be feeling pretty annoyed right now. Although, probably more self-loathing, if we're honest.
Volish fanbois can grab Dreamscene from Windows Update now. Whoop. µ
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Don't need Vista to have a looping background as your desktop image. VLC can do it for free. Right click on the video and select "Wallpaper"...

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Do folks /really/ want a looping video for their desktop backgrounds? "Next Generation"? Boring! (Well, I suppose some will be impressed.) Why do we still have to use keyboards and mice? Why not use all this processing power for something /really/ useful and beneficial?
Dont need anything more than Home Premium. And Looping Video? Thats a resource hog that I dont need to add to the already staggering requirements to get Vista running anywhere near decent.
People actually spend $$$ on an OS, Linux FTW!
I bet the Windows XP piracy scene is absolutely jumpin' right about now.
I use enlightenment on linux and it has had animated backgrounds for years
I remember way back when XP first came out (you know, when emule was new and virtually unknown and TechTV still existed) and I sat down to watch The Screensavers and I distinctly remember an episode where they showed everyone how to put up video backgrounds on XP (sans VLC). 
I also vaguely recall managing to do it with Win98... WTF?!?!

seriously, i did purchase ultimate (enterprise features, including vpn) and i want something NEW m$!!
Why do they do stupid things like this then...

Ive had DreamScene for months on Vista Ultimate, and now i'm re downloading it through windows update, the exact same thing as far as I can tell.

They should hire some freelancers to do their work, seriously, they suck.
Hold on, I have had Dreamscene enabled on my PC for months now. Sure, it was a voluntary download from the Vole, but this 'feature' has been around for a while in some form or other.

Wasn't the Media Centre functionality another feature of Ultimate? I know it can be found in Home Premium, but after the s**** that was XP Home, one bitten twice shy.
Dreamscene has been out for at least 4 months. you can even download starkdocks dreamscape and it adds more becgrounds.

but like most things with vista the background crashes alot and you have to reset it at least once a day.

this post is well out of date.

p.s main reasion i got ultamate was the total backup and media center all in one
Yeah, back with Windows 98 you could enable Active Desktop, put a web page with embedded video onto your desktop. The playing video on your desktop is certainly not new.
Why do people who have NEVER used Vista and its features keep making comments on things they have NEVER USED! 

I agree that Microsoft has dropped the ball on the Ultimate Extras to date, but Dreamscene is actually a desktop 3D renderer, not just a simple video playback engine. There’s one Dream, Desktop Earth from Stardock (they help build the Dreamscene technology with Microsoft) that in real time renders an Earth spinning on its axis showing night and day. It’s pretty cool. 

Fully utilized, it has some interesting potential. I’m not touting Dreamscene as something fantastic, but it’s cool. And if you have a decent gaming grade machine, it’s not a resource hog at all. Quad core machines with good GPU’s can be had for $1000 these days.

There’s a lot of Vista reporting out there, and the more I look at it, the more I realize that and large number of those people writing this stuff haven’t even looked at the things they write about.
could display a TV channel as desktop background for years and without performance penalty or instability
Active desktop (a joke it's true, but available since Win98?), and a snippet of html with an embed accomplishes the same thing doesnt it?

Admittedly I've only tried it on win 2k, so xp and above may trip all sorts of messages to protect the user about unsafe content...
What users like chips-pc fail to understand is that the Dreamscene build on their PC "months ago" was in fact a beta, hence the PREVIEW prefix. The final build just came out.
It's funny to see the Windows PR team working full time. If they spent half the resources on being innovative as they are on squashing the competition and trying to spin their most recent disaster, maybe there wouldn't be so much backlash.