Did I miss an explanation posted here about Background Services?

If not, Avid should post something here becausse it's not described in any of the MCF upgrade docs.

Likewise, the Application Manager has been modified with an extra install step. Why no documentation here?

No, you didn't miss any explenation about the Background Services.

Background render, transcode, consolidate and Dynamic Media Folders are not available in Media Composer First.

Found this out, buy why the auto-launch of BackGround Services in FIRST?

I have no answer to that question. Maybe someone from Avid can explain this.

MCF is really nothing more nore less than a restricted version of MC. Most of the internals are identical. MC expects certain services to be available, even if you're not using them (you have the option to render or transcode in the background with MC, but you can just as easily do these tasks in the forground). It's probably easier to just have MCF start the services and leave them idle instead of coding around them. Idle services don't take up CPU and use very little memory.