I have been running a copy of Windows 7 RTM 7600.16385 x64 for little over a week now. It has been a good experience to get a look at the final version of Windows 7, which by the way is really good. But there is one slight problem: Windows 7 Ultimate does not ship with the Dreamscene feature.
DreamScene allows you to play videos as desktop wallpapers. The feature supports either wmv or mpeg file formats and even avi if the file format is modified before. Users get a moving wallpaper instead of a static wallpaper with Dreamscene which was probably the most popular Windows Vista Ultimate extra.
Here is my desktop as I write this article. That is 720p Planet Earth “Shallow Seas” as the desktop background.
It was one of the best features in Windows Vista in my opinion. It was different and not many people had seen videos as their desktop backgrounds before. Well now I can’t live without it. I had to use a hack to make it work in Windows 7. Thanks Microsoft.
So I decided to do a little research as to why Microsoft left out this great feature. The only thing I found was this: “In Windows 7, Vista’s successor, DreamScene has been replaced by a “Desktop Slideshow” feature which produces slideshow background wallpapers, but does not support videos unless modified.”
I searched high and low for the reason DreamScene was left out of Windows 7. I even contacted Microsoft about it. I am waiting on a reply from them as you read this. But I could not find a good reason why the feature was left out completely. Other than to showcase the new Desktop Slideshow feature; which is not really all that cool. At the very least Microsoft could have included the option to turn DreamScene on.
Bottom line. At least you can make Dreamscene work in Windows 7. I would be one unhappy camper if there was not a hack available. That is more than enough of me ranting about Microsoft. As always, comments welcome!
