Microsoft Wants Media Center To Fail…I Swear

Vista-Media-Center You may have noticed that I regularly tout Media Center as one of my favorite features of Windows Vista. I have even been using/loving it as my sole DVR for about three months now. It should come as no surprise then that I have been following the next iteration codenamed Fiji quite closely. While the software sounds good for the most part, I can’t understand why it seems that Microsoft is trying to make sure Vista Media Center (VMC) never takes off.

Overall I find the concept, and to a large extent the execution, of VMC to be awesome. Here are some the strengths of VMC:

I especially like that the recordings are just files that I can play on my laptop or stream over the Internet (via Orb) when I travel. You can also easily sync and automatically transcode recordings to WMP-compatible media players, Zunes, and even Windows Mobile devices. I do wish they’d develop/release a softsled (software-based extender) though.

Vista Media Center TV Pack

Microsoft are set to announce the “Vista Media Center TV Pack” formerly codenamed Fiji at next month’s CEDIA Expo. It will bring welcomed features such as proper native QAM support and heterogeneous tuner support; both of which I’ve been waiting for. While many were expecting features such as support for H.264 and DirecTV, and the ability to have widescreen thumbnails, no such features are showing up in tester’s hands. Honestly, overall it is a complete disappointment. Not just because of the software, it is the delivery too.

Epic Fail

It gets ugly when you start to look at how you can get some TV Pack goodness for yourself. First problem, you can’t upgrade to it. Apparently a fresh install is required; just what I want to do with a system that is setup how I like it. Second, it is only available through OEMs! But wait it gets worse. Third, all the OEMs have said they are only planning on supplying the TV Pack with new computers.

Let me get this straight, so because I bought and installed Vista myself, a very common scenario for most current media center users, I don’t get access to a key update to an included component of the OS? And Even if I had bought my HTPC through an OEM, they aren’t going to support the product further? Who is making these decisions and how do they sound right to them? As if I didn’t feel like my copy of Vista Ultimate wasn’t completely lacking anything Ultimate about it already.

It must be awful to be one of the developers working on Media Center at Microsoft. So much work into a great product only to have it destroyed in the marketplace due to bad business decisions. The many VMC users out there are pretty loyal but we will only take so much. It is like we are continually waiting for the next installment to really make it all right (satellite support, good digital cable support, broad codec support, softsled, built-in place shifting, etc). Microsoft is lucky my DVR options are so bad to begin with, but that won’t last forever.

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Filed In: Digital Media, Microsoft, Tech News, Video and TV, Windows, Xbox
August 7, 2008

Comments

13 Responses to “Microsoft Wants Media Center To Fail…I Swear”

  1. Bob Caswell on August 7th, 2008 8:09 am

    So you mentioned what it doesn’t have (but what people were hoping it would have)… but what does it have that makes it so you’d want to upgrade?

    Whatever the case, the delivery decisions do seem like a slap in the face to any existing users.

  2. Paul Ellis on August 7th, 2008 8:29 am

    While I do wish it had the other features (especially the DirecTV support) I’d love the native QAM support (my tuner has a hack to do it, but it isn’t great) and the heterogeneous tuner support. They are features that arguably VMC should have had from the start.

  3. xeallos on August 7th, 2008 9:41 am

    Agreed, VMC is terrible. If you use it as an extender for your 360 you can utilize all sorts of weird “plugins” that are almost guaranteed to **** up your installation, but allow you to do amazing things like browse a FlickR feed or set of tags from your living room, or get the local weather.

    Unfortunately, the interface is sloooowwww over the 360 and again all of these plugins are incredibly buggy and half of them aren’t meant to be used outside the native PC - NOT on an extender like the 360.

    You’re better off just using WMP11 off an XP install to share your media folders to stream divx/mp3 content, the speed and reliability is there in spades and you don’t have to deal with the crufty/slow VMC interface.

  4. derek on August 7th, 2008 11:34 am

    Agreed… MS is pathetic in how they’ve mismanaged VMC. The underlying technology is good, and nobody else has matched it (yet), but they seem bent on self-destruction by under-delivering features, massive delays, and abysmal marketing.

    They’ve also screwed up the Extender model by limiting licensing, while ensuring that 3rd-party extenders are less capable than their own (xbox360 - which is functionally a good extender, but awful (and noisy) form-factor)

    MS should have made Media Center a separate SKU rather than embedding it into the OS. People would have gladly paid for it, and eHome could have been a profit-center for MS instead of a cost-center that constantly has to justify its’ existance every fiscal quarter.

    Cable & Sat support is pathetic (non-existant) largely because Cable-Sat industry has little confidence in MS, and MS does nothing to motivate them.

    - Buy a new Vista PC to get dysfunctional CableCard functionality?…
    - Buy a new Vista PC so I can have a mediocre software update?….
    - Buy a new Vista PC to get dysfunctional Satellite functionality some time in the distant future?…

    WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY THINKING???

    MSFT stock has flatlined for the last EIGHT YEARS because of poor decisions like this.

  5. Paul Ellis on August 7th, 2008 1:01 pm

    Derek, you capture my feelings on this perfectly.

  6. Alfred on August 7th, 2008 4:21 pm

    You say in your article that “Microsoft is lucky my DVR options are so bad to begin with, but that won’t last forever.”, but your options aren’t bad. You can always get a TivoHD that has all the DVR functionality of Media Center and more.

  7. BenDover on August 8th, 2008 1:42 pm

    Relax. Check for the TV Pack on your trusty bittorrent sources and just download it already. Jeez

  8. jh on August 10th, 2008 6:53 pm

    I have installed the update on an existing system and it works fine. However if a use a relatively dated tuner with it i find the system crashes a lot. Its an old external Hauppauge USB tuner.

    Otherwise all seems good. i’m happy just to have support for more than 2 tuners to tell you the truth, EPG support for Oz would have been nice…
    jh

  9. Paul Ellis on August 10th, 2008 7:04 pm

    jh,
    Thanks for the update on that. Did you lose all of your scheduled recordings after you applied the Fiji update? I had heard something about that. It also concerns me that no programs (especially Orb) understand this new WTV file format.

  10. jh on August 10th, 2008 7:08 pm

    Yes I did loose scheduled recordings but then again I also had to change EPG providers in Australia because EPGStream.net seems to not work with the update. So the lost scheduled recordingins could have been from the EPG change. I am also concerned about the new WTV format because I use TVToolbox alot and i expect this will not work with the WTV format.

    jh

  11. jh on August 19th, 2008 6:40 am

    Just for the record TVToolbox Beta4 won’t even install on a TV Pack install.
    jh

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