When you are whiteboarding your company strategy, the pitch which accompanies the thin client concept always sounds attractive. You can deal with 90-plus per cent of most people’s daily grind with a tiny fraction of the horsepower shipped in a netbook, never mind anything in a regular desktop case.

Microsoft clearly has this idea very much in mind because when Bill Laing  demonstrated Windows Server 2008 Remote Desktop VDI (which to you and me, is remote computing with a whole virtual machine to yourself, inside a super-quick server running off the network), he made significant use of a ThinLinx, a little emerald-coloured box that drew only three watts of power.

What seems to prevent companies from using these little wonders is one of four factors. The first, Microsoft feels is it is addressing in the new feature set of Windows Server 2008 Remote Desktop. RemoteFX means you can put a high-powered graphics chipset in the server and it will do the hard parts of 3D rendering in a display-hungry application. That’s cool, though from hints at the end of the presentation, it sounds like only those with deep pockets and big problems will use it  – only two guest VDI machines per server-side render-friendly graphics card, sounds like a hard sell for the rest of us.

The second problem is that almost nobody has a completely green field for this type of computing, and pretty much everyone can recycle old PCs as thin clients, more cheaply than they can buy new.

The third is thin clients keep on turning up with just that bit too much taken out – so the little emerald box had VGA analogue out and HDMI, but no DVI.

The fourth killer problem is that there’s some stuff that just won’t pass through a client/server Remote Desktop (formerly known as Terminal Services) session all that reliably.

Chief amongst that type of traffic is voice and video. Lots of demonstrations during TechEd show that Microsoft is pouring brainpower into those areas – the Silverlight streaming video player responding seamlessly to an artificial bandwidth choke in mid-play was especially impressive – but as ever, the real gems were to be found down on the show floor.

I was drawn to an inconspicuous stand in the Microsoft zone by what looked like a trapper’s rack of pelts; once I had my varifocals on I realised it was a display of a variety of third-party VoIP telephones. This was the Microsoft Communications Server “14″ booth, and yes they did put the number in quotes themselves: given how recent the inception of Communications Server is, 14 is most likely not a version achieved by iterated increments.

The clear implication from cross-examining the product guru on the stand was that Microsoft would very much prefer everyone to make calls via a softphone. In fact, Microsoft would very much prefer that people ignore the surrounding industry FUD about network requirements for VoIP, and just let the server work it all out. That said, the array of things closely resembling a telephone was impressive; personally I find VoIP as a marketplace a bit too ready to claim cross-platform standards when in fact it’s all locked-down and proprietary.

It was while looking at Polycom USB-only handset units that I discovered Communciator “14″ came on phone devices running Windows Embedded – and that there’s an Xbox 360 version. I am famous in my Terminal Services/Remote Desktop deployments for trying to run the oldest or strangest thin or semi-thin client I can muster: my next SSD homebrew project will be an Apple G4 Cube, built principally for Remote Desktop client duties. Getting an Xbox 360 just for communicator would probably be foolish, so I immediately asked when the Xbox RDP client would be out; at which point I got that classic “you might ask that, but I couldn’t possibly comment” look from my cornered guru.

Would this be a credible “daily driver” device? What’s the oddest “thin client” machine you’ve managed to get running?

Although the Spotify software itself doesn’t support streaming to other devices, it’s perfectly possible to do so with the third-party software, Jamcast. What’s more, the Jamcast software is completely free of charge and (unlike the iPhone/Android software) you don’t need a premium Spotify account to take advantage.

I set this up on my Xbox 360 over the weekend and the process could barely be easier:

1. Download the Jamcast software and install it on your PC.

2. Open Jamcast, click the devices tab and check that your Xbox, PlayStation or digital radio/receiver appears in the list. If not, click Find and it should appear.

3. Fire up Spotify. Jamcast essentially broadcasts the output from your PC’s sound card to other devices on the home network, so check you’ve got no applications such as email clients running in the background, or be prepared to have your listening interrupted by “you’ve got new mail” jingles.

4. Turn on your Xbox and choose Music from the My Xbox section. Select Jamcast from the list of networked devices, then select Playlists and Virtual Soundcard. Click play, and after a few seconds delay, you should hear Spotify streaming through your console’s speakers. (Note that the instructions may vary slightly for other consoles/devices).

JAMCAST CAVEATS

Jamcast is beta software and the streaming experience isn’t perfect. The stream suffered from the odd audio wibble and drop out during our tests. A post on the Jamcast support forums claims this is down to the PC struggling to sample the Spotify audio quickly enough, which could be a particular problem on low-powered laptops and netbooks.

There’s also a five to ten second delay between the sound emanating from your PC and the sound coming out of your console/digital radio, so don’t panic if it doesn’t kick in immediately.

We also struggled to get Jamcast running on our test digital radio (the Revo Pico RadioStation), which recognised the Jamcast Virtual Soundcard playlist, but flatly refused to play it. Others have had more success with digital radios, judging by the forums.

MAC STREAMING

And what about those of you in Apple land, who are unable to install Jamcast? Several online forums suggest it’s possible to stream Spotify using a combination of the $25 Airfoil software and Apple’s Airport Express devices. Note – I haven’t tested this, so proceed at your own risk.

Let me know on comments below if you’ve found any alternative/better ways to stream Spotify to non-PC devices.

The era of the low-budget game pretty much died with the Commodore 64, Spectrum and Amstrad era. Before long the Amiga and the Atari ST had raised the budget bar to £9.99 – not so much an impulse purchase, as a couple of weeks pocket money at the very least.

Yet, that was nothing compared to the inflation of the console era. New PlayStation titles routinely cost £30. Today, a brand new Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 title can set you back £50. I sympathise with the parents I see dragging their disappointed offspring away from the game aisles in Tesco, explaining they simply can’t afford the latest releases. For my mum it was a couple quid on top of her copy of the Daily Mail and Woman’s Weekly; for today’s mums it’s almost as much as the weekly shopping bill.

However, one recent breakthrough has renewed hope of a return to the “golden age of gaming” – and it comes in the unlikely form of the iPhone. The iPhone Apps store is selling low-budget games by the bucketload, many of them far cheaper than the £2.99 bargains I was plucking out of Smiths in 1985. The Guardian’s superb games reviewer Nick Gillett picked his top 10 iPhone games at the weekend, and no fewer than four of them cost only 59p. The most expensive on his list is Beatmaker at £11.99, but that’s the only one more expensive than £2.99.

I don’t own an iPhone, but my brother-in-law does. Every time we see him, my four-year-old daughter sidles up to him and asks if she can have a go on Flight Control, a ridiculously addictive game where you take on the role of an air-traffic controller, bringing planes in to land and sending them on their merry way again. It’s about a million times better than I make it sound.

Yes, I know the iPhone hardware’s expensive, but so was the Commodore 64 (my dad paid £399 for ours).  And given the choice of forking out 59p to keep my daughter entertained with a new game every week, instead of £40 or £50 on the Wii or Xbox 360, I know which one I’ll be going for.

I know it can do media streaming and all those other goodness things. But in terms of actually delivering notable benefits, this has been a second-class citizen compared to a Media Center computer once you move outside of the games market.

But perhaps this is changing. Certainly, the announcement that Sky will be streaming video to it is interesting, albeit only for those on large bandwidth connections and with the approval of their ISPs.

And the interactive person-to-person demonstration from Peter Molyneux (head of games developer Lionhead Studios) certainly made me gasp. He says that all of this is possible on the new platform. And I believe him more than a jazzed-up video demo from Microsoft.

I think there are two interesting questions from this – firstly, how well will it really work? Is there enough spatial-recognition capability in the Natal sensor box to see small movements, or will it really require lots of arm flailing?

And what is the business perspective here? Clearly I’m not expecting Excel to grow a skateboarder interface – that team has better things to do, like making it do proper mathematics first and not generating bad results.

But there should be a lot here for developers of business software – face recognition, gesture control, watching what the user is actually doing, and so forth. A small amount of this wizardry could make a significant improvement to the business desktop.

As always, the proof will be in the pudding, and you can get too excited about benefits that never really happen. However, I’ll certainly be watching with interest to see if Natal does get a second life well outside its current proposed incarnation.

If you go to any show on the iPlayer menu, you’ll now find an option called More Downloads, under which there’s an option called Windows Media Player. This basically bypasses the new Adobe AIR-based desktop client and downloads the programme directly as a .WMV file.

This means you don’t have to faff about installing the client software (which is annoyingly set to launch on start-up and report home to the BBC on your viewing habits by default), you can just play the files straight from Windows Media Player or Media Center. However, the real boon is that it makes watching the iPlayer on Media Center Extender devices such as the Xbox 360 a cinch.

Although the old iPlayer worked flawlessly with a select few MCE devices, trying to watch files on the Xbox 360 required a byzantine set of hacks to bypass the digital rights management. Now, all you need do is download the WMV files on a PC on your home network and the Xbox 360 plays them flawlessly.  

The picture isn’t quite broadcast quality, and we noticed the odd bit of juddering in our brief tests last night, but it means that Xbox 360 owners are now on a level footing with PlayStation 3 and Wii devotees, who’ve had iPlayer streaming for some time. 

The BBC’s Where To Get iPlayer page suggests getting the service to run on any MCE (or Home Media Hub as the Beeb calls them) should be a piece of cake. Simply download the programmes as normal on your PC, open Windows Media Center and add the iPlayer downloads folder to your Media Center library, then jump on to your MCE device and simply play back the relevant files from the comfort of your TV. Robert is your dad’s brother.

Except it doesn’t work on the Xbox 360. Well, at least not my Xbox 360, nor those of a couple of colleagues I’ve spoken to. Although judging by numerous internet forums, it seems to work flawlessly for some people. When I click on downloaded programmes using the Xbox 360’s MCE, however, I’m presented with a blue screen displaying the message:

“Video Error. Files needed to display video are not installed or not working correctly.”

This is, of course, complete bunkum. Other, non-DRM protected videos stream perfectly happily from my Vista laptop to the Xbox 360 MCE. It’s only those pesky iPlayer files that produce the error message.

So I’ve found a couple of ways around the problem. The first is a doddle. Instead of choosing the Download To Computer option from the iPlayer service, go for Download For Media Players. This bypasses the iPlayer App on your PC and simply downloads the video like any other file. Save the video to a folder that’s monitored by your Xbox MCE (the default Videos folder should work fine) and it plays back perfectly.

The problem with choosing the Media Player files is that they are designed for portable players, so the video is heavily compressed. Even on my relatively modest 28in screen in the lounge, the picture quality is horribly patchy.

So, with the help of a couple of internet forums, I’ve found a way to watch the higher quality Computer downloads on the Xbox. Here’s how you do it:

1.  Make sure you have Windows Media Player 11 downloaded on your PC.

2. In Windows Media Player, click Library | Media Sharing and make sure that it’s set up to share video with your Xbox 360.

3. Download the programme of your choice using the Download To Computer option from the iPlayer website.

4. Once it’s downloaded, play the programme for a few seconds in the iPlayer app on your PC so that the appropriate DRM licence is downloaded (make sure you play past the BBC ident, or the licence won’t be downloaded).

5. Now for the bizarre part. Make a copy of the programme you’ve just downloaded (you will find it in C:\Users\Public\Videos\My Deliveries on a Vista PC) and plonk it in your Videos folder (or any other folder monitored by your MCE).  Now rename it to something a little more friendly – the iPlayer downloads are given hideously long filenames by default.

6. Navigate to the folder you just copied the video to on your Xbox 360 MCE, and the video should play.

7. The video will be in the old-school 4:3 format, but if you click on the X button on the Xbox 360 controller and select the Zoom option, you can fill the screen.  Whilst not quite Sky+ quality, the video is perfectly watchable.

So there you have it, the iPlayer on the Xbox 360 – albeit with a little bit of faffing around. I’d be interested to hear your experience of watching the iPlayer on the Xbox 360, particularly if you can get it to work without the seven-step procedure outlined above. One theory I’ve seen floated on forums is that it works flawlessly with Windows XP MCE PCs but not Vista. Let me know your thoughts on the comments below.