Crave posted a pretty good $70 price, a far cry from the $199 retail and $132 it runs on amazon. But a quick Froogle search turned up the same package at Fry's for $60. Considering you're getting the exact same software standalone TiVo boxes use and a USB TV tuner that can decode ATSC and QAM, that ain't a bad deal at all.

Keep in mind you will have to pay $100 bucks a year for TiVo service, the one thing about TiVo that I never liked.

Also, the tuner can only accept clear QAM, ATSC and NTSC signals, so no premium cable. Hopefully now that Windows 7 supports CableCARD so well, you'll be able to expand your channel selection soon. [Fry's, Crave]

• CBS Audience Network: Featuring a variety of shows from CBS Primetime, Daytime, Extras, and TV Classics, including full-length episodes of current TV shows, CBS Classics TV shows, short clips, and Web originals.
• Full Zune Video Podcast Library: Thousands of hours of entertainment with full TV episodes, webisodes, clips, and videos from providers including ABC News, CBS News, CNBC, CNET TV, Comedy Central, Current TV, The Discovery Channel, Fox, G4 TV, HBO, MSNBC, NBC, Showtime, and Revision 3, along with some of the best user-generated videos on the Web. Some video podcasts are also available in HD.
• MSN and msnbc.com: Clips as well as full length episodes from TV shows such as Arrested Development, news and weather from MSNBC, editor picks and most popular videos, five day weather forecasts, news, video playlists, music videos, movie trailers and more.

If you haven't already noticed the upgrades in your Windows 7 Media Center menu, you can manually update by going into Tasks >>Settings >> General >> Automatic Download Options.

Unfortunately, extender support and HD streaming are still not part of the Netflix package—a major disappointment. Engadget also claims that Internet TV picture quality is lacking. Still, all things considered, it should be a welcome update for fans of online TV. For most Windows 7 users, the updates should show up automatically—otherwise they can be downloaded via Tasks. Hit the link for a full gallery. [Engadget]

What it means to you, theoretically, is that you should be able to go out and buy CableCARD tuners and add them to your Windows 7 machines to turn any old machine you have lying around into an HTPC. Also, they've raised the limit to four tuners per "tuner type", so you can have four digital cable channels simultaneously without any kind of special setup.

There is also a new Firmware update for ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuners to mark copy-freely content—the content you can move around your network and portable devices. [Microsoft]

For those unaware, there are two ways you can stream media to your Xbox: through media center or through your windows media player library. Media Center gives you the advantage of a visually-oriented UI and some advanced features such as live TV and movie rentals. Streaming through the Media Player library, conversely, is an easy, no nonsense way of accessing music and videos.

The problem is, getting everything setup isn't such a breeze. Let's start with Media Center.

In theory, you should be able to start Media Center on the Xbox it will already have a prompt to initiate the setup process (If you already have another MC computer up and running, you can go into the Computer menu under System Settings) In theory, it should offer an eight digit number, which you then plug into the setup screen on the desktop Media Center client, and the rest is taken care of.

This worked the first time, but because the UI on the Xbox media center was painstakingly laggy, I attempted to unlink the Xbox and PC, and try the setup again. A handful of failed configurations took place, and I ultimately had to make sure no trace of previous MC setup attempts were present on either the Xbox or the PC, then clear the Xbox Cache.

After that, it managed to setup OK, but kept saying the bandwidth was extremely low, when it was actually fine. And even after setting it up again, the Xbox Media Center App is really, really slow to navigate over wi-fi. Apparently, according to Microsoft, the beta version of Media Center streams better with your computer hooked up to Ethernet. They say this will not be a problem in the final version, but for now, it is what it is.

Music playback is pretty smooth as it picks up anything in your library, and provides a bright quilt of album art to view in the background while a song plays. Videos show up in your video library, and playback, though there seems to be some freezing, and difficulty with playback controls. The new Play To feature, which uses Windows Media Player on your PC as a remote control also worked well inside Media Center (we'll have more on this feature soon).

As for accessing your files through the Windows Media Player Library, it's as easy to set up as it was on Vista. Except now, all you have to do is go into Windows Media Player, click the Share in the menu bar, and select the share media option up at the top. A box should pop up with a one-click option to enable media sharing, and all the music and videos in your Media Player library should be available to stream via the Video and Music library options in the Xbox interface.

The only problem is that video seems to be finicky. Windows friendly formats, such as WMV, seem to work best, while AVI files tend to have problems. The Media Center team at Microsoft says that the beta version of Media Center isn't handling third party video formats particularly well, especially DivX and Xvid, but they expect to work the kinks out on that soon. Wilson has been able to get a couple of AVI files streaming properly using the above steps, but Jason and I have not, and the video folder registering as empty.

In any case, it may not be perfect yet, but with a bit of tinkering, you can get Xbox streaming working with Win 7.

View our other Windows 7 tips and our continuing coverage here.

A few days back, I showed you the new touch interface for Media Center PCs running Windows 7, and though I had to pull the video, I promised a walkthrough of proposed Windows 7 Media Center features. I say "proposed" because, like everything else about Windows 7, this is all alpha and subject to change. But these features are very cool, and really should be included. One more thing: These screens were projected on a wall in a well-lit room, so they look horrible, but anyone familiar with Media Center (and Microsoft has shipped like 100 million of them, so that should be plenty of ya) will have a good idea of the pleasantness to come. Or you can just drink in the following prose descriptions:

• Shows appear dissolved behind menus - When you're watching something and want to pull up a menu to add a new show or browse the channel guide, or even go into another area of the Media Center, the current show stays on, not as a picture-in-picture, but tastefully dissolved into the background.

• Chronological turbo scroll for channel guide - When you're looking at the channel guide, but want to go from Tuesday to Sunday in a hurry, you just hold down the arrow button on the remote, and the days start to whip by. Listings become a blur, but the days of the week, and the portions of the day, appear floating over the listings to give you an idea of when to stop.

• Live thumbnail forward and rewind - During HD video playback, you might want to jump around. Grab the time marker and drag it forward or back, and as you do, you see a miniature version of the show playing backwards or forwards at the same speed.

• Launch TV from Start menu - Media Center can occupy a pole position in the Start menu, and when you hover over the MC logo, a list of recently recorded shows pops up, along with other frequently used MC features.

• Floating Media Center gadget - Not only can you access shows from the Start menu, you can browse MC features from the desktop with the gadget. I am not clear whether or not you'll get to have actual video playing in it, but for people who need MC at their fingertips, this appears to be a nice, subtle execution.

• Alphabetical turbo scroll for music - The chronological turbo scroll on the channel guide is cool, but this one will come in more handy for me: As you scroll through the countless artists in your music collection, the names become a blur but your location in the alphabet is denoted by two letters, probably so that those longer letters like J, M, R and S can be broken up better.

• Drifting cover art grid - When you're playing a song, the album art for that track appears with some basic metadata, and all the cover art for every other track you own materializes and drifts in the background. The primary cover art jumps from side to side and top to bottom, so that everything is in constant, fluid motion.

• Scattered photos picture show - As you're playing music, you can opt for a photo show that essentially reaches into a folder, grabs a handful of shots, scatters them evenly around the page, and then zooms in on one at a time. A nice touch: In the wide angle, all the photos look like desaturated black-and-whites, but as each shot gets its own screen time, it magically becomes full color.

• Copy remote content - If you are browsing multiple libraries or Media Center PCs and come across a show you like, you can watch it or save it for later by hitting "make a copy." As long as there's no broadcast flag or some other DRM, the vid will flow over to your local HDD so you can watch it when you've left the network.

• Virtual channels without TV tuner - One of the new Media Center's central concerns is the new popularity of internet-based video, not just YouTube clips but whole TV episodes like those shown on Hulu. DVR functionality is key to making the most of an MC, but at launch there will be loads of virtual channels with shows you can watch just as easily. Microsoft demoed a special MSNBC channel that had clips and full shows; it's of course feasible for them to build similar channels for third-party web video services too. [Windows 7 on Giz]