12.25%

Through an annoying turn of events that ended with my XP machine’s partitions getting hosed, I’m now running Windows Vista. I’ll reserve my opinions of the OS for another post, but I found an interesting behaviour in the new Media Center. Well, maybe not that interesting, but the observation of such behaviour is extremely geeky and borderline obsessive nonetheless.

Media Center produces thumbnail images of your videos and recorded TV at precisely the 12.25% mark of the movie, every single time. So for a movie that’s 1 hour and 42 minutes long, it makes the thumbnail from the 12.5 minute mark. Why 12.25%? What makes that point of the movie worthy of a thumbnail? Is that the height of the climax on most TV shoes that are 20-24 minutes long? Or is it some arbitrary number a Microsoft developer pulled off the top of his or her head? Inquiring minds need to know.

See? I told you it was geeky.

February 4, 2007 | Filed Under Uncategorized