We put the template support in for Visual Studio 2008 towards the very end of the 5.3 development cycle as a 'bonus' to fulfill community requests -- you'll notice we don't even mention it in the What's New section of the SDK documentation at all since we didn't know the street date for Visual Studio 2008.

There are three templates which ship in the 5.3 version:

Windows Media Center Application
A project for creating a Windows Media Center Application containing a page with four buttons which invoke a Media Center dialog box.

Windows Media Center Application - Background
A project for creating a Windows Media Center Background Application.

Windows Media Center Application - Fundamental
A project for creating a Windows Media Center Application containing the minimum code and markup required.

It just so happens that Visual Studio 2008 released to the general public a day or two before we released, so I've been scrambling to test out the SDK install on all sorts of permutations of Visual Studio installations -- the surface area for this testing is quite large when you look at the fact all of them can peacefully coexist with side by side installs. Last night we found an issue where one of the templates (the first one in the list above) isn't available in Visual Studio 2008 if the only development tool you have installed is a Visual Studio 2008 SKU.

Select one of the following to resolve...

• Make sure you have a Visual Studio 2005 SKU installed (including any Express Edition) in addition to Visual Studio 2008 prior to installing the SDK.
• Run a repair of the Windows Media Center SDK 5.3 if you've already got it and a Visual Studio 2008 SKU installed and are installing a Visual Studio 2005 SKU second.