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Microsoft's Family Room Change
michael_cain writes "Siliconvalley.com is reporting that Microsoft is shutting down its Ultimate TV project. The service itself will continue to be offered. The set top box hardware developers are moving to the XBox organization. With the sales of the XBox already larger than either Ultimate TV or its predecessor, WebTV, it looks like Microsoft is adopting the game console as their method-of-choice for getting a platform to run their software into the family room." I found the decision to more or less put UltimateTV on life support and discontinue active work on it interesting - that leaves TiVo and ReplayTV as the main standing competitors.
And Moxi Media Center...
that leaves TiVo and ReplayTV as the main standing competitors
What about the promising new addition to the playfield:
Moxi?
Tivo could also record 2 shows at once. But just on the DirecTivo unit. Pretty much all of the DirectTV PVRs can do 2 shows at once, and the cable ones can only do one show at a time.
"- It's Microsoft. Despite what they would tell you, I think there's a real stigma with having Microsoft's name attached to something at this point. Despite the reality, to the average Joe it means this thing is going to crash often and not work the way I want it to."
If I remember right, in this case this stigma was justified. I recall early on hearing about how UltimateTV had a bug where it kept on filling up its hard drive. I remember it required a (wait for it) software patch to fix it.
There was a mention of it here, but also a better story that I can't seem to track down. If anyone remembers it would be much appreciated.
My wife convinced me to buy a UTV last year. In my experience it was the best home appliance we bought in recent memory, despite my concerns about its Microsoft leanings.
Allow me to throw out some personal observations.
- It's NEVER crashed. Ever. It's a bit slow to respond to some keys, as if it's waiting for some bitstreamed data off the satellite for the next guide page, but it's rock-stable. This is no surprise - after all, if you never install anything except Windows9x, your computer will never need rebooting. It's when you install all the other cruft that things get flaky. And you can't do that to a UTV.
- It's almost perfectly integrated with DirecTV. That's something that Tivo lacks, and most Tivo owners don't know they're missing. For example, it's a bitstream-pure capture from the satellite. The picture is perfect every time. All the guide information is captured with the program - click Info when you watch a recording, and you get all the title and description, no matter how much later you watch it. The expanded guide is terrific - title, actors, and plot summary for every movie and most serial shows. The complete integration also extends to the record features, so as you browse or search the guide, you just click the record button to capture the selected show - no matter when it is. No programming, just one click recording (hmmm... patent material there?)
- Dual stream capability means I can record or watch two shows at the same time (yes, watch two - see the next topic about picture-in-picture). In fact I can record two and watch a third off the hard drive.
- It has a built-in PIP tuner. For those of us who didn't spend the extra bucks for a PIP-capable TV years ago, it works around that by providing a minimal picture in picture. And both the main and mini shows get captured for instant rewind - up to half an hour - not just the main screen.
- It's completely changed our paradigm of TV watching. No commercials, ever - we watch slightly delayed and simply skip them. Instant replay on any sports play. By delaying a football game an hour, I can watch an entire quarter in 8 or 9 minutes - each play is about 35-40 seconds apart, so one "Skip" forward and I'm watching the next play instantly. Want to watch a program at the same time as something else? Just record it and watch it afterwards. In fact, record TWO things and watch a third off the hard disk. How about easy recording - see something you like in the guide, click the record button and it gets recorded for you, start to finish, no overlaps, no fuss. You can even click a second time to record every instance ad nauseum. It is so convenient and perfectly suited to how I would have preferred to watch TV in the first place that anything less is pure frustration. My wife and I find ourselves hunting for the "Rewind" button on the radio now, since we're so used to backing up 7 seconds if we miss something. In fact we've even turned to each other and laughed after both wishing we could rewind something the baby did, to watch it again.
- Integration with my VCR. The UTV includes an infrared LED on a wire that you position on the front of your VCR, and the UTV can command your VCR to power up, start recording, stop recording, and power down. So you can set the system up to tape directly to the VCR if you don't want to dump something to the hard disk.
Sorry if I sound like a UTV commercial, but this is no joking the first consumer appliance I've ever bought that not only lived up to its hype, it far exceeded it. So from where I sit, who cares if it has MS on the label.
Now, as to the "others": Sure it has some shortcomings. But those are essentially in features I don't use. Okay, it's not fast, but I can live with the slow remote response in some features. I logged on to WebTV exactly once. It's a pain in the neck typing in a URL using four cursor buttons on a remote. The download speed for a page is okay, but nothing to write home about. And the resolution on a TV screen is awful. So I could care less if WebTV goes away. It's also got email capability. Again, typing an email would be a royal pain, and reading on the screen would be frustrating. So who cares about TV email. Anyone who buys this thing for a web browser or email appliance will be disappointed. But I doubt that's why it's selling. It's because of the awesome DTV integration. So if WebTV rolls over and croaks, good riddance, as long as the UTV features live on.
Finally, it's not $499 anymore. I think the shelf price at WalMart is $199.
Finally, one question: Why is MS (or is it DTV) still pumping so many bucks into UTV advertising? Just yesterday during the NFL playoffs, I saw a couple UTV ads.
My advice: if you can have DTV and can afford an extra $10 per month (for the guide and record features), GET ONE while you can. And my take on this: MS is wisely losing the WebTV and email features, and focusing on the really cool digital video features. (I hope!)
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
> Bill Gates never said "640 KB of memory should be enough for anybody."
He did, in 1981.
> Intel does not fear AMD.
"Only the paranoid survive." - Andy Grove, founder of Intel.
> Linux in five years will be about as mature (for the home user) as Windows 98 is today.
Never try to predict that far into the future when it comes to computers. Five years ago, Winmodems and Winprinters didn't exist. Five years before that, Windows didn't either (in any game sense, anyway). Hell, five years from now, computers themselves may be passe. How many people did you know with PDAs in 1996? And home users don't generally read Slashdot, so they don't normally care what Slashdotters call them.
For the usual result of trying to predict the future of technology, I refer you to the quote above, that you said Mr. Gates never said.
Virg
For me the main reason to buy UltimateTV was that it recorded the DirecTV signal digitally (and two channels at a time). I had seen Tivo and Replay and I never liked the quality.
However, the product as a whole sucks monkey-ass. Interestingly enough, a friend of mine who happens to work for WebTV (his bad), tells me that a lot of senior developers from M$ where on the project. I must come to the conclusion that with senior he must mean age, not superiour technical skills.
Microsoft, a company that has spent gazillions on User Interface research, managed to get a product out that fails even the most basic requirements of a good UI.
For example,- it's not uncommon for the unit to take > 2 seconds to respond to a key press on the remote. It was M$ themselves that concluded that a response has to be within a second.
There's the case where the unit shows a screen with NO information, just ONE button (and it's not a delete confirmation or so). Like, what else do they expect us to do than hit that button? E.g. redundancy gallore.
Never mind the horrible navigation and the terrible interface to select/unselect your channels from the 2400 that are available (of which many are unavailable for reasons such as you didn't subscribe to them, oddly enough there's evidence that the software DOES know that these channels are not subscribed to).
I could write a book about this product. It pisses me off though,- we kept the unit under the assumption that it was still very new and further development would improve the software. Like that was ever gonna happen...