I finally got my own experience with Windows Vista Ultimate over the last few weeks, having been somewhat forced to downgrade from Vista Home Premium 64 bit back to a 32 bit based version of Vista to get some software that just wasn't cooperative to behave itself (DVD playback software if you must know, which I'm still less than impressed with since the makers of same have had time to get their act together and make their products compatible with 64 bit Vista).
When making the switch I had a 32 bit copy of Vista Ultimate available or I could go through loading up Vista Home Premium but in 32 bit instead of 64 bit. I figured what the heck, use the copy of Vista Ultimate and save the copy of Vista Home Premium 64 bit for loading on different hardware later (it wasn't an OEM version so I could transfer it around later if I wanted).
Not having played with Ultimate before, I couldn't recall what the big differences were between Ultimate and Home Premium though I knew that both included the Media Center components and Ultimate may be used on corporate networks (or at least that it includes support for use on corporate networks and not simply home workgroup type networks). Outside of that, I really wasn't up on what the differences were. Poor sales job by Microsoft I guess.
In addition to the poor sales job on what the differences are, there's been a poor sales job on just how some of the additional goodies in Ultimate really work and/or what is required if you want to roll your own of some of the goodies. For purposes of this article, I'm taking about the DreamScapes feature. The ability to put a looping video into the background on the desktop. Most of the time I'd call that sort of feature a waste of resources, but on most modern hardware you'd probably never notice even a blip on the resource usage radar while even the most impressive of DreamScape scenes was playing away in the background.
Ultimate comes with a few DreamScape choices available after installation, enough for a little variety, but for me it's mostly just enough to make me want to find more or perhaps make my own. Now, I understand that the hosts of the site I'm posting at (Stardock) make nice software for rolling your own, or using the products of others that have rolled their own. That's all fine and dandy, but I'm more curious about just what the requirements are for using a video of your own to make a DreamScape background with? Does the video have to loop automatically or will Vista Ultimate just make the video loop on it's own? Where are good places to find videos that could be used without having to make your own? Where are good places to find videos to start with and tweak and what tools would be needed to tweak same?
As someone at another site I visit frequently stated in asking a question that they needed help with, please explain these things in fairly simplistic layman's terms. i.e., treat me like I'm stupid, I can take it, and I may actually learn from it. 
