The Vista DreamScene feature comes only with Vista Ultimate. The DreamScene is a looped video that can be set as a desktop background. It's not pre-installed , but you have to go in Windows Update and install it along with the other Ultimate Extras (Hold 'em Pocker Game, BitLocker etc.). After you install it in Personalize>Desktop Background>Windows Dreamscene Videos, there's only one Dreamscene Video, the Vista Aurora Animated Video, which looks pretty good. Actually it's pretty much the best DreamScene video that you can find on the net. In the context menu on desktop there's one more option now, Play Dreamscene or Pause Dreamscene. This is handy, so you won't need to change the desktop to a regular image, when you 'll need to open a more graphic consuming application, you'll just pause the Dreamscene Background.
DreamScene Videos are played on the PC's video card so it's not messing up the entire system. However, you will need at least 1GB RAM and a video card with 256 MB memory. With this kind of configuration with bigger DreamScene Videos above 15 MB you will notice some slowing down and minimal stops. So I recommend that you use this feature with at least 2GB Ram and a newer graphic card (nVidia GF 7 or 8 and if you can allow yourself make it a 512MB graphics memory).
You can use any MPEG video as a dreamscene, but it's recommended that they are looped so you can't notice the starting over of the video.
So far Stardock, has the biggest gallery with dreamscene videos, and many of them are free. But in order to use them (which natively are in .Dream format) you will need Stardock's Dreamscape software (freeware).
I found a lot dreamscenes, in .Dream, but they are just converted .mpeg's or .avi's. You can convert video files to .Dreams with Stardock's DreamsMaker (freeware)
But my opinion is why do this, when you can use the original video files, without any extra software. Currently the .Dream format and Dreamscape aren't really necessary. However, Stardock soon will make Dreamscape work on the other versions of Vista too.
Well, if you have Vista Ultimate and adequate configuration I don't think that there are any reasons why not to use a live, dynamic desktop background.
Few days after you install Dreaqmscene, in Windows Update with Ultimate Extras there'll be more Dreamscenes for download.
Dreamscenes Video Downloads (mpeg and wmv)
No comments:
Post a Comment