Here are some Windows Media related headlines that caught my eye recently:

• Microsoft has released new “preview” versions of Expression Blend and the Expression Media Encoder that work with Silverlight 1.0 RC.
• Vishal Sood has a nice post up about Server Side Playlists with Windows Media Services.
• Engadget has heard that FairUse4WM is capable of stripping the DRM from files acquired via the BBC’s new iPlayer.
• For developers: David Mullet explains how to automate Windows Media Player using Ruby.
• Long Zheng has dug up additional information on Vista SP1. Among other things, it should include an update to DirectX 10.

Hope you had a great weekend!

I guess the old adage when it rains it pours really is true. Microsoft folks are usually pretty quiet in the blogosphere when it comes to Windows Media, but not today. First, there’s a new blog at IIS.net called the IIS Media Delivery Blog:

IIS team members working on media will be posting here to talk about technologies in the pipeline and already here today that will help you better serve media content to your users.

The author (known only as brflem - dude, introduce yourself!) goes on to explain that the Windows Media Services team is now part of the IIS team, a reflection of the convergence of multimedia and web applications. Welcome to the blogosphere! You can subscribe to the blog here.

Secondly, there’s a wonderful post from Vishal Sood on Server Side Playlists (part 1 of a series):

Definition: Server-side playlist is a list that identifies what content is played for a client, the time at which it is played, and the order in which it is played. The server-side playlist for a Windows Media server is an XML document.

Looks like it’ll be an interesting series, so check it out if you’re serving digital media using Windows Media Services.

Microsoft released a Windows Media Services (WMS) package for Windows Server 2008 June CTP this week. Bill Staples, who runs the Web Server engineering teams at Microsoft, says the package is now supported on the Web SKU, though the download page says some features (such as the WMS Cache/Proxy plug-in) are not supported.

From the download page:

Use this release of Windows Media Services to test a Windows Media server running the Windows Server 2008 (June CTP) operating system in a test environment. Microsoft Windows Media Services is an industrial-strength platform for streaming live or on-demand audio and video content over the Internet or an intranet.

Here is the WMS package download, and more information on the June CTP.