1. Provide a Rich Media Experience with Windows 8
Microsoft designed Windows 8 to enable its users to engage in a variety of rich multimedia a ctivities.
Offering microsoft development experts to engage with these capabilities through an extensible media
platform was also one of their goals. As compared to other vers ions of Windows, Microsoft has
remarkably improved its media experience in Windows 8. Right from the codec support to UI of the media
players, they have designed this media experience to:
 Simplify Development: A platform that could be easily extended and tailored during application
development that enables developers to build innovative custom media apps on Windows.
 Maximize Performance: Media playback is fast and responsive, enabling the full power of the
hardware while maximizing battery life on each PC. This platform would then enable a wide
range of multimedia apps, music, video, etc.
With Windows 8 media platform, those involved in Microsoft development can deliver a fluid and
responsive media experience along with great battery life. Microsoft claim s that it has engineered
Windows to provide a great user experience. As media applications continue to evolve further at a rapid
pace, the media platform that Windows 8 offers will enable these experiences to stand out across all
Windows 8 PCs. Some of the key features of Windows 8 with regards to media application development
are:
Multiple Media Scenarios Support
Features like seamless connection to external media devices, support for modern video formats and low-
latency communication streams forms an integral aspect of the Windows 8 platform. Performance is
important as are the features of Windows 8 that are enhanced because of the performance.
Low Latency
Windows 8 is designed to support both playback-optimized and communication-optimized scenarios. This
helps drastically reduce or even avoid end-to-end delay that is caused as a result of buffering. The media
infrastructure switches between a playback mode (high buffering, more tolerant of varying conditions) and
a communications-optimized mode (low delay) to achieve this.
Extended Battery Life
One of the most important features that the Windows 8 platform offers is extended battery life (reduced
power consumption) during audio playback. The audio playback pipeline has been drastically improved
by batching up large chunks of audio data and processing that chunk at one time. This increases
efficiency during steady-state playback. The CPU can stay off for over 100 times longer (over 1 second
vs. 10ms), which in turn results in increased battery life during audio playback.
Seamless Playback of Premium Content
Enabling seamless playback of high definition, premium video content is another important feature that
Windows 8 offers. Unlike any other video content, premium video content requires two substantial
platform features in order to deliver the best experience. These include adaptive bitrate streaming and
content protection. Both these aspects are offered by Windows 8.
There are a host of other important features other than the ones mentioned above that m ake Windows 8
the most desirable platform for Microsoft development enthusiasts. The internal software structure
improvements in Windows 8 will make it simple to use and share media across devices.