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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.
With XBox in more living rooms them Tivo, this means that Microsoft has a huge platform to launch from if they extend UltimateTV to the XBox.
that leaves TiVo and ReplayTV as the main standing competitors
What about the promising new addition to the playfield:
Moxi?
"It almost certainly means this functionality will be lumped into the Xbox's successor, which is fully in line with everything we've heard about that box so far."
Then they have a problem. XBox has only been on the market now for what, two months? If Xbox 2 hits stores less than a year after the release of the original, then it's going to fall flat on its face. One of the big reasons many have stayed away from Xbox is that they don't want to get on the vicious cycle of upgrades Microsoft is famous for, and releasing a new system less than a year after the old would just justify those fears. At the very least, they'll have many Xbox owners who see the new Xbox 2 come out, and decide to not spend their money and wait for Xbox 4 or 5 to come out before upgrading.
It's too early in the game for Microsoft to even think about competing with themselves in the console market. If they think the same rules for running their OS monopoly can be applied to today's three-way power struggle...
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.
... He sat there with a blank look on his face. He's a smart man, owns a decent computer, but isnt a computer nerd, and doesnt worry about the ins-and-outs of the computer world. To him, microsoft is all there is, and that's fine. They make software that does everything he wants to do. If he needs something for his computer, he goes to microsoft or dell, and gets it from them. That's just how life is.
This is the one thing I dont think most slashdot readers understand fully.
The true "average joe" doesnt think microsoft is bad. They dont leave their computers on for 20 days at a time, and they dont test them hard enough to force them to crash. Some may have noticed a crash or two, but thought very little of it.
I was taking a drive with my girlfriend's father, talking about computers, and I mentioned that I dont run windows
You may push your computer hard enough to crash windows. I, personally, push mine hard enough to crash freebsd from time to time. That makes us exceptions: most people very rarely crash their windows computers, and look at microsoft as a provider of the computer world. Is this right? Well, I have a hard time aruging that anything open source has produced tops the Office suite, and I've yet to have XP crash on me, so perhaps it's not too far fetched.
I do agree with you that it really means nothing to Tivo and ReplayTV, but saying the stigma of microsoft was it's own downfall seems short sighted: the name microsoft probably meant more along the lines of "hey, I've heard of this company before. that's what's on my computer at work!" than "this shit's gonna crash on me."
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
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
I, personally, push mine hard enough to crash freebsd from time to time.
From your description, it sounds like you pushed your girlfriend's father hard enough to crash his O/S too.