Apple, Roku, Google, Boxee…. They’re not the only ones gunning for your big screen. Microsoft was arguably the first major company to focus on bringing digital content to your TV with Windows Media Centre, which the Redmond company launched all the way back in 2002. It never caught on, but now, the Seattle Times is reporting that Microsoft is going to make another attempt – by putting Windows Media Centre on a set-top box.
I always liked Windows Media Centre. More specifically – I liked its user interface. This was an interface clearly designed with the specific use case in mind, and it worked beautifully. While the UI was great, its feature set always left a slightly sour taste in my mouth; the lack of decent metadata retrieval was its biggest shortcoming for me.
Things like Xbmc and its derivatives have clearly surpassed Media Centre over the years – well, except for one use case: television/DVR. Xbmc, the AppleTV; none of them do television/DVR like Media Centre can. Google TV is attempting to provide good television service, but for now, it’s US-only.
The product was also never a big success. I guess the business of setting up a computer for such usage was too much of a hassle for many, and I can’t blame them. Following in the footsteps of Google TV, Microsoft is now trying a similar approach: instead of Media Centre on a computer, why not throw it on a set-top box? Before the angry comments come in: the Apple TV plays in a different league than Google TV/Media Centre. Call me when it does television instead of just streaming iTunes content bought on your PC.
The Seattle Times is reporting that during this year’s CES, that’s exactly what Microsoft will launch. According to them, it will be a box powered by Windows Embedded – however, which Windows Embedded that will be remains unclear. It could be Windows Embedded Compact (what I continue to call Windows CE because Microsoft’s naming scheme is utterly idiotic), but it could also be Windows Embedded Standard (the componetised version of Windows XP, Vista, and today Windows 7). The Windows Media Centre interface will run atop this operating system.
This all could also explain the Windows NT-on-ARM rumours; it could be that Windows Embedded Standard, which is currently only available for x86 and x86-64 (it’s just Windows NT, after all), has been ported to ARM because this rumoured set-top box uses an ARM processor. However, this raises the question – why simply not use Windows CE?
Anywho, the device is supposedly cheaper than 200 USD, and is expected to ship later this year. From what I understand, the software can also be integrated into TVs.
There was never a WES version for Vista, the XPSP3 based 2009 version is followed by WES 7, just nitpicking 😛
Media center was not the first microsoft TV effort. IT was Ultimate TV.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_TV#UltimateTV
http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/news2/ultimate-tv-team-disbande…
Also, nit picking is disgusting. It refers to picking lice eggs out of another’s hair.
Unless Microsoft can sort out the content providers issues that are plaguing GoogleTV, what’s the point? Yet another box that can stream Netflix or Hulu+ (something Google is having issues getting on Android).
HULU Plus + Netflix + LAN media == the holy grail.
I would rather have unfettered access to all sites than just Hulu Plus.
Back in the day I used windows media centre edition and the biggest problem was the fact that you could only get media centre with a special edition of windows.
The MS attempt at controlling hardware to actually get this version didn’t really go down too well. Add to that, the PC’s that came with it were expensive as hell.
An OEM copy of MCE and a tuner card cost nothing compared to the full box at retail.
I started using Linux not long after that and XBMC/Boxee has been the best media centre software I’ve used since.
Windows 7 has got media services on Windows where they should have been 10 years ago. If they’d actually taken a risk by selling it as separate software with TV tuners (which most people didn’t have then and still don’t now.) they might have fought off competition in this area before it even started.
Not meaning to rock the boat or nitpick here, but Microsoft was hardly the first big name to push media centre software. Back in 1991 Commodore released the CDTV which was basically a Amiga computer in a Hi-Fi style case. It did flop big time eventually, but that was more to do with Commodore marketing blunders and mis-management than anything else. It was a great innovation and way ahead of its time back then. Certainly wouldn’t hurt Microsoft to take a good look at designs and innovations like the CDTV and others, and build upon them.
The most recent Apple TV does much more than “stream content purchased on iTunes from your computer.” The NetFlix streaming, combined with the ability to buy and stream from iTunes has rendered my cable television connection useless.
I admit the Apple TV was lame when it was released, but its a lot better now.
apple fanboy – just for the sake of comment why do you bother to waste ur time. can’t u read ‘Call me when it does television‘.
Most people, presumably people who don’t own an iOS device, don’t really understand what Apple TV really does. I got the Apple TV not for the iTunes media content or YouTube or Netflix, I got it so I can stream media from any Mac in my house to my TV with no effort and – and this is the killer – stream video or audio to my TV from any iOS device with just the tap of an onscreen button. That’s big.
Instant media streaming from any iOS device may seem trivial if you don’t own an iOS device but if you do the moment you use Airplay you are just blown away, as has been anyone I have shown it to. I can for example stream a movie straight from my phone to my widescreen TV and it produces a very good quality image more or less indistinguishable from SD cable TV. Apple TV is just a cheap box to link all your iOS devices to your TV.
Airplay is still at an early stage, as it is further integrated into iOS and into the hundred of thousands of Apps on iOS it will be very significant.
Streaming video from your computer of phone to TV. Wow, that’s really big … for Apple user maybe. The rest of us is already using DLNA for that. Check out ‘Play to’ feature in Windows 7 media player for quick demo.
Sounds good – at least for those with Apple devices.
VLC has been able to do this for years now, albeit it’s not nearly as pretty nor user friendly. However the reason I meantion VLC is that I’ve recently noticed an XBMC plugin that does this kind of streaming too (using VLC in the background IIRC).
It’s something I’ve installed really to play around with but not yet found a need to try (features like these are rather cool but also pretty pointless for most users most of the time)
Edited 2011-01-05 12:17 UTC
Wouldn’t this be something they could do through X360 rather than introducing yet another device? They have a good console market share, and this would add value to X360 as more than just a game system, also they could probably cut game peripherals and offer a TV version of X360 which could later be ‘upgraded’ to a game system by purchasing said peripherals.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this will become available on the Xbox 360 as well.
In theory yes, but in practice most consoles (360 included) actually sell for a loss as manufacturers expect to make the money back from game licenses. So I wouldn’t expect MS (or anyone else for that matter) to sell their hardware for even less still to those who just want a media centre – particularly when the actual hardware required for a HTPC is pretty cheap and lower-powered these days compared with what gamers needs.
Ahh, you are most likely right, I didn’t consider that. Still, it doesn’t exclude offering this possibility to existing X360 owners like Thom suggested, and having such a potentially big user base would perhaps help in getting good deals with content providers.
Possibly, but I suspect MS would rather go after the multi-gadget market that Apple do so successfully at.
Redmond have already shown an interest in getting their customers tied into multiple products on that platform with (if I recall the name correctly) XNA which allows developers to write games that can be transferred from the XBox to WP7 to the desktop. I suspect a set-top-box would be the logical next step.
They might even want to include basic web functionality such as e-mail and searching – thus tieing users not only into Hotmail, but Bing, Trident (the engine behind Internet Explorer) and Silverlight. And the best thing is, because this is an integrated device like mobile phones rather than a blank desktop, there wont be nasty anti-monopoly trials (as MS don’t own a monopoly on set-top-boxes) and plus it would be much harder to install competing products such as GMail, Firefox or even wiping the whole lot and installing Linux). So by encouraging users onto Microsoft’s set-top-box, MS essentially have the forced lock in’s they’ve crave for the desktop market.
They have the possibility of doing something like this already through the Xbox 360 Media Center Extender, which lets you stream some content from your Media Center PC to the Xbox.
While I’m generally very happy with Windows 7, Media Center, and the Xbox 360, the Media Center Extender for Xbox left me nothing short of infuriated. For some reason, using Media Center Extender, you cannot play all the same media types as you can when using Media Center directly on the PC. There may be a compelling technical reason for this, but I’ve always been suspicious that it was less about technical limitations than about media rights.
At any rate, I like Media Center reasonably well, and would be curious to see if a set-top box would offer any goodies for owners of the Xbox 360 and/or Windows Phone 7. I’ve liked that they seem to have started to put some effort into making their consumer devices and services work together.
A French ISP named “Club Internet” was offering IPTV using Microsoft TV on a set-top-box (KISS 8006 with a Sigma Designs chip). It was launched in mid-2006 and was one of most advanced STB with a really good UI.
In fact, most of the Microsoft software was not running on the STB itself but on a “cloud” of Microsoft Terminal Servers.
Two links, in french:
http://www.clubnews.fr/?espace=television&menu=television_evolution… http://www.infos-du-net.com/actualite/dossiers/47-microsoft-tv-adsl…
AT&T Uverse is essentially the media center software in a set top box.