VERDICT Minor tweaks leave Expression Media looking even more old-fashioned, under-powered and out of its depth.
Microsoft Expression Studio is designed to provide end users with the richest computing experience possible so advanced media handling should be key. Unfortunately this obvious requirement seemed to pass Microsoft by so that, rather than developing its own visual file manager, it was forced to buy in an existing third-party solution at the last moment. Worse the program it picked, iView MediaPro, was ugly, awkward and well past its sell-by date.

VERDICT Top-of-the-range video preparation and encoding together with Silverlight-based web playback should give Encoder a winning edge – but doesn’t quite.
There’s one media format that can make or break the computing experience – video. That’s why it’s so important to get the right balance between quality and file size and why both Adobe and Microsoft provide dedicated video encoders. Surprisingly, despite Adobe’s longstanding video experience, this is one area where Microsoft outscores its rival.

VERDICT: Bizarrely antiquated and underpowered creative asset management.

To give a general boost to its professional design credentials and in particular to its Expression Studio suite, Microsoft decided that it needed an application for managing media assets and so bought up iView MediaPro 3...