It’s that time, everyone. Well at least it is for those of you that haven’t already downloaded it via TechNet, or were really silly and grabbed a torrent or some such thing.

Yes, the Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 is now available for download from the Microsoft Download Center, which of course means a correlated rise in family support calls.

On the whole, there is nothing spectacular to be expected; unlike with previous versions of Windows, with this service pack as it is primarily a roll up of patches and hotfixes that were released during the past year.

However there is one new enhancement in the service pack called RemoteFX. As Tom Warren at Winrumors points out this enhancement is to improve the Remote Desktop in Windows.

RemoteFX is a new enhancement to RDP’s graphical remoting capabilities. The idea behind RemoteFX is to allow for a full remote experiences including multiple displays, Aero and multimedia streaming to all types of client devices including low cost thin clients. RemoteFX achieves this by using a technique known as host-based rendering. This technique allows for the final screen image to be rendered locally on the remote PC after being compressed and sent down to that remote host. The enhancements are expected to greatly improve video streaming across remote sessions which is currently one of the major drawbacks of virtualized computing.

Grab your download of Service Pack 1 via the Microsoft Download Center (SP1 build number 7601.17514.101119-1850)

[Cross-posted at Winextra]