Following Microsoft's earlier public Beta and later RC releases of its SideShow Gadgets for Windows Media Center Edition PCs, the Windows SideShow team has recently released the final versions of Media Center Gadgets for Windows Vista 32 Bit and 64 Bit versions.
Windows Media Center Gadgets for Windows SideShow includes four gadgets: TV, Music, Pictures and Video and Now Playing which allows you to control most Media Center functions from a SideShow-compatible device like a Windows Mobile smartphone.

For instance, you can use the TV gadget to browse the program guide, schedule recordings and browse and play back recorded TV shows. With the Music gadget you can browse and play music. Use the Pictures and Video gadget to browse pictures on your device and play slideshows and video. The Now Playing gadget provides information on what is playing in Media Center and provides playback controls like those on your Media Center remote.

Unfortunately, and that's the real bummer here, Microsoft's brand new Media Center Gadgets doesn't work on Windows Media Center systems which are running Microsoft's recently released TV Pack 2008 (code-named Fiji). While the TV Pack 2008 was never released to end users, since this summer it's available to PC ODMs and therefore there are some good (in this case bad) chances that upcoming Media Center PC systems will have the TV Pack 2008 preinstalled which prevents from running the SideShow Gadgets for Windows Media Center Edition. Hopefully Microsoft will fix this ASAP.

The 32 and 64 Bits SideShow Media Center Gadgets are now available from Microsoft's Windows Live Gadgets site. If you want to run it on your Windows Mobile smartphone, you need the earlier released Windows SideShow for Windows Mobile Developer Preview installed on your Windows Mobile device.

Cheers ~ Arne