A follow on to this post here. The Ultimate Extras team have put up an update on what's going on.

We intend to ship Windows DreamScene and the remaining 20 Language Packs by the end of the summer. We will not ship the last two Extras showcased in January (Windows DreamScene and the remaining 20 Language Packs) until they meet the high quality bar required by our enthusiastic customers—and we believe that we can achieve that bar by the end of this summer.

They also go on to mention further updates that will be rolled out over the next couple of years, which they are "confident will delight" us. My thoughts, DreamScene final is good, the pre-release version does have a few niggling issues, and 20 more language packs, which would bring the total up to 35 (by my reckoning).

It's good that we've got this update, thanks to the team for posting something up, but I still like Long's idea of getting your choice of game to download.

Long Zheng did up a recent post on his blog covering Ultimate Extras, or lack of. This was a concern for many people going back to when it was announced, will Microsoft get bored and turn its efforts on something else. It's been pretty quiet for the last 5 months, Dreamscene RTM has yet to ship, and we've had one content pack released for the beta version, and some wallpapers.

I for one would like Microsoft to clarify what they're doing and what the status of the Ultimate Extras team is. Long made a good suggestion, letting users pick a couple of Games for Windows games to download over Ultimate Extras, now that would be a good idea. Heck I'm sure most people would settle for that funky photo editing application they demoed back at the beginning of the year or even an announcement on what they're working on instead of the near virtually wall of silence we're facing at the moment.

For those who have had a play around with the preview of DreamScene, an Ultimate Extra you may be wondering how to enable sound.

You can do this by using the Sound Mixer, an often overlooked feature, just unmute DreamScene.

Microsoft have posted up a pre-release version of Windows DreamScene, check for new updates for it to show up in Windows Update if you need to.

It ships with one video the aurora style one, based off the default wallpaper.

Earlier this week at the CES Microsoft announced some of their Ultimate Extras, this is a feature in the Ultimate Edition of Vista which periodically pulls down new applications as Microsoft release them. They announced three for launch on the 30th of January; Hold 'Em Poker Game, BitLocker and EFS Enhancements and the one I'm most interested in Windows DreamScene.

Video: Demo of Full Motion Desktop

Basically it allows you to use an MPEG2 or WMV as your desktop wallpaper. Microsoft ship both HD and standard resolution videos which seamlessly loop with the software too.