Windows Media Center design and architecture - part 2

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Francis Hogle has posted part 2 in his series about the behind-the-scenes design and architecture of Windows Media Center on the Media Center Sandbox site. In this post, he describes the components of the Media Center rendering engine, specifically the following pieces:

  • Animation system - sequence, value table, interpolation and property connector
  • Presentation model - graphics device, visuals, surfaces, render operations, clip gradients, surface pool, sound device, sound buffer and sound
  • Output drivers - DirectX graphics and sound, Win32 graphics and sound, Xbox 360 graphics and sound
  • Core services - message transport, object management, scheduling and memory management

As a reminder, Francis previously posted part 1 in his series where he introduced the architecture of the Windows Media Center Presentation Layer.

I encourage everyone interested in learning more about how Windows Media Center works behind the scenes to take a look at these 2 posts (and eventually at parts 3 and 4 when he posts them).