video desktop backgrounds possible in xp - ala VISTA??

[yoda313]

Hi all,

I watched the two hour show on the CES 2007 show they aired on G4 Thursday night. They showed a bit of VISTA and mentioned you can have VIDEO backgrounds instead of just wallpapers.

Is there are way to do that in XP???????

I'd love to have some movie clips running in the background. Maybe Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, or MATRIX floating in the background. That it'd be cool to loop the best of clips.

Would memory be a serious limitation of that feature though? I only have 512mb ram in my current pc right now. Would that be enough to do video background? Also what video format would an XP version accept????

[yoda313]

I found after a quick yahoo search that little old vlc media player has a "WALLPAPER" button. It will play the video in the desktop. Pretty slick.

Not exactly what I was looking for but since I already had the program installed this is pretty neat

[guns1inger]

I find the wrong image distracting. The idea of having videos playing is too much. I have a plain black background. I find having anything else makes watching videos or colour matching photos too difficult.

That said - VLC does a decent job of it.

You might also look at

http://www.topshareware.com/Desktop-Background-Magician-download-9054.htm
http://www.crystalgraphics.com/powerpoint/video.backgrounds.main.asp
http://www.exterpassive.com/ (warning : incredibly slow site)

[yoda313]

thanks guns1inger. I may look into those but vlc does what I was looking for

[TooLFooL]

not quite 'video', but you can also use an animated .gif for wallpaper

[Heywould3]

you can use html pages as wallpaper.. just save the page to desktop folder and open properties and browse to it of it has flash or animation it will play it on desktop.. kinda cool

[yoda313]

I think I saw that this feature is a VISTA ULTIMATE exclusive only feature right now. I do have VISTA PREMIUM so it would be neat if they send it on down the chain

[InXess]

If you put a TV behind your monitor you will have a video background and... if you hook up a VCR to it you will be able loop Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, or MATRIX as you like. And YES, 512 Meg of memory should be plenty enough for that.

[yoda313]

Yeah but I don't have LOTR and Matrix on videotape - only dvd (although I do have three sets of Star Wars on VHS )

[SquirrelDip]

Yeah but I don't have LOTR and Matrix on videotape - only dvd (although I do have three sets of Star Wars on VHS )

Let me guess... You go through Start Wars videos the way most go through Playboy Centerfolds??? :P

<sorry Yoda - couldn't help myself...>

[yoda313]

Ahem....

no....



If you must know:

1 set is full screen thx original release (the last vhs original release by the way)

1 set is full screen special edition 1st release (the ones that actually say SPECIAL EDITION on them)

1 set is widescreen special edition (the rerelease around 2000 when it does NOT say special edition but actually is the special edition version) - I got them so I had the widescreen versions - that was back when any dvd release of Star Wars was seen as unlikely for a long time.