Alpesh Nakar Blogs on SharePoint, Microsoft and that’s IT

Nothing beats Windows Vista ‘Ultimate’. The real beauty with Vista Ultimate is Ultimate Extras.

If you know what I mean – Dreamscene. Windows DreamScene enables you to use looped, full-motion video as your desktop wallpaper instead of a static image.

This is available as a Windows Ultimate Extra. Not for any other version. And if you using Windows Xp/MAC, you really don’t have a choice.

Yes, you do. VistaWired shows you how.

1) Download the latest version of VLC Player here.

2) Open your video file, right click, and choose wallpaper. You can find some great videos to use here:
Winmatrix
SkyTimeLapse
Corbis Motion
Microsoft WMV HD

3) If you do not see the wallpaper option then proceed to:
Settings > Preferences > Video > Output Modules > Direct X.
Once you get here, check the Advanced Options box in the bottom right hand corner.
The advanced options will appear. Check Enable Wallpaper Mode. Now when you right click on your videos, you should be able to see a Wallpaper option.

If you want VideoLAN to behave like Dreamscene, you obviously do not want to see it in your taskbar since you will be running it for a long time. To get rid of its appearance in the taskbar:

4) Proceed to Settings > Preferences > Interface > Main Interfaces > wxWidgets

5) Then uncheck the box beside Taskbar

If you want to reach VLC, you can only get there by using Alt+Tab or Vista’s Flip3D. You can also choose to check the box beside systray so a VLC icon appears in your system tray.

6) Finally, you really wouldn’t want your background to disappear after a couple of seconds so we would have to loop it. To do so, just click on Playlist in the navigation menu, and a list of settings will be provided. Thanks to Matt for reminding me that I have forgotten to include this.

MAC Users:

All you have to do is proceed to the following:

VLC > Preferences > Interface > Main Interface > Use as Desktop Background

VIA VistaWired