The new Expression website is now live including a download link to a trial of Expression Studio 2 as well as the individual products including Expression Encoder 2.

There are a bunch of video demos over there hilighting new features across the product family.

We are working on a blog post for the Expression Encoder blog that will talk about what's new in the RTM version.

Andy Plesser of Beet.TV posted this interview from NAB which includes a demo of some of the Silverlight 2 Olympic coolness we can expect this summer:

http://blip.tv/file/834791

This year I won't be attending the NAB Convention in Las Vegas for the first time in, oh, twelve years or so.  This is certainly a disappointment on a personal level since I have a lot of very close friends in the broadcast industry whom I see very little of these days and NAB is always a good time to catch up.  I remember being holed up in a hotel room  at the Four Seasons 10 years ago producing what are now know as video podcasts with Graham and Nick.

Nostalgia aside, Expression Encoder 2 will be on display in near final form on the Microsoft Booth where Brandon and David will be doing a sterling job I'm sure.  There will be other Silverlight and IMM goodness on tap.  If you consider yourself a Video Compressionist and are up for some free drinks on Microsoft, check out the party that Ben is hosting.

The technology arm of ROOT6, my old company have a booth this year.  I'm told that they'll be showing some pretty cool ContentAgent Silverlight action themselves .. be sure to check it out if you are attending.

It will be interesting to hear how the show feels with both Avid and Apple not present this year.  Will Apple announce the rumored Final Cut Extreme?  Will Avid announce Vista support?

The up side of not being in Las Vegas is that I'll be here in Redmond at the same time as the MVPs.  Looking forward to having a chance to chat to Jake and the other media-related guys n' gals who'll be on campus and getting their takes on Encoder 2 and ideas and feedback for the next version.

Pete Blois has a great article on how to make Silverlight XAP packages dynamically load other XAP packages.  This enables some great scenarios including (but not limited to) preloaders.. he shows an example of this here.

Once we are done with Expression Encoder 2 (nearly there BTW) I'm looking forward to extending the User Poll Silverlight 2 video player demo Chas and I showed at MIX to use dynamic loading.