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Microsoft Bringing TV to Xbox
grazzy writes "Microsoft is set to release its Windows Media Center Extender for Xbox mid-November. The device will allow you to view recorded and downloaded media content stored on your PC via your Xbox.""
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FP, finally something I can do with all that drm'ed media.
too bad you'll need to have one of those overpriced Windows Media Center edition machines around your house first...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
have a TV tuner, and PVR software on my XBOX than just playback.
There are enough media players out there (such as the GoVideo 2730) able to play anything Universal Plug & Play provides, that making my XBOX another player is, frankly, dull.
Design for Use, not Construction!
Cool, now maybe some tivo functionality can be added to XBMC
MS is finally getting back at the hackers now by reverse engineering Xbox Media Center and provided it directly from MS. Who says MS never listens?
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
Maybe they are getting the idea from all the chipped xboxes out there and how nice it is to use the xbox as a media center?
Finally catching up to the mod-chip scene...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
http://ps2media.ign.com/ps2/image/article/557/5576 37/checking-out-the-pstwo-20041015062407316.jpg
Nuff said.
It seems to me as though everybody needs to back up for a second here, fix the concerns and problems with copyright, and then create the technology. This just seems like an answer looking for a problem. Today, I'm not sure if I can upload my DVD collection to my computer (I wouldn't even have the hard drive space on my computer), and why on earth would I want to do this when I already have a nice simple solution involving DVDs and a DVD player?
on my TV???
Sweet! What will they think of next!?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
'Illegally' Modded XBox with XBox Media Center: $200
XBox with MS XBox Media Adapter: $229
Media Center PC: $1000+
It's a good thing for Microsoft that xbmc is an open source project. I guess they're trying to make a product that will allow them to collect some extra revenue but more importantly convince them that there exists an easier solution then modding their xbox. However, why make it just for Windows Media Center edition? How many people actually have that?
Question - what does this have to do with the Xbox?
Answer - Nothing.
This is a set top box, not an addition to the Xbox.
http://bit.blkbk.com/
This is a distro set to turn your xbox into a MythTV box. Pretty cool stuff.
Combine that with their online music offerings, and even a subscription service such as an enhanced XBOX live and DVD playback, and youve got the Windows Media Center in homes all across the world on an infrastructure that's already highly controlled.
While Nintendo and Sony have been banking hard on cell technology and other gamer focused add-ons, MS is covering the do it all, in every home aspect, and they will win if allowed to do so.
one of Sony's main driving forces for playstation adoption (1 and 2)... was the inclusion of a cd player or dvd player... an unecesary add-on as far as games go, but a strikingly powerfull one as far as extra features go.
If nintendo/sony dont come up with their own media center functions, they will find themselves eclipised by MS very quickly despite their better game focus.
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
yea.. and if it works as good as media center on XP and the rest of my shows i already have..
i'll stick with Myth and it's mplayer backend.. atleast mplayer recognizes 99.5% of the codecs that are generally used.. quite unlike the codec hell you go through with windoze.
as far as the arguement about MS losing money on every xbox sold...
they'd lose a hell of a lot more $ if ya didn't by the damn things to put linux on in the first place.
They just figured out that people would rather stick a game console next to their tv than a noisy pc tower. Also, voodoopc has a complete set available for purchase. Their modded xbox looks so cool.
http://www.voodoopc.com/systems/vibe.aspx/
With XBox 2 around the corner, it seems to me that Microsoft is firing the first salvo in the upcoming Media Center wars. Sony and Microsoft both want to be the entertainment hub of the living room - video games, TV, music, movies... all in one.
I guess M$ has an advantage in that they control the desktop, but I think they're making a mistake by releasing XBox 2 so early. The hype simply isn't there the way it would be if they waited for Sony, and once the PS3 does come out, everyone will be comparing spec's. By releasing now, they're locking in at a lower specification level.
Surprisingly, Sony's answer, the smaller PS2 doesn't even have a hard drive. I guess this means they're not seriously pushing the PS2 as an entertainment appliance.
Nintendo, in contrast, is holding out until the PS3 release date for their next generation system, but pushing their DS handheld now in it's place. Since Nintendo has a reputation for good handhelds, they can gain some foothold here and convert people who want handheld to console compatability (which I suspect isn't that many people).
majority of early posts include such titles as:
- MS is getting back at the hackers
- Microsoft finally caught on!
WTF, why would you think MS is catching on?
I'll never say something like that until they start selling xboxes that don't need modchips.
The MOD community isn't just about creating unincluded features, they are about freedom, and this is something Microsoft will never catch on to.
Great, now I will be able to see the "blue screen of death" during Leno!
...a use for all those XBOXes running MythTV frontends ;-)
hmmmm should I pay $X for microsofts PRV adapter and media player for the xbox and deal with whatever DRM they through in, or just flash the TSOP and upload XBMC to my xbox. Oh well I guess that wasn't to hard a decision after all.
The IGN article at the end says you will need a Media Center PC as well. This just made this little device completely worthless! Looks like the $50 modchip is still the best option.
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
You wanted to link to this: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/eva luation/devices/xboxextenderkit.mspx
That actually discusses the Media Extender for the XBox, rather then the settop box which is causing confusion.
"Microsoft is gearing up to compete directly with the TIVO DVR market with a product that will have a huge market penetration"
That is, for those who purchase/own an Xbox, a Windows Media Center edition machine, and this new gadget on top of it all.
Or I can just get a TiVO? Cripes! Who wants three MS boxes chained together (cross your fingers) just to get TiVO functionality?
Smells like another money-losing venture for MS.
Spend 200 on an Xbox and a mod chip and stream ur files over ethernet or, with a 802.11(a/b/g) access point, over wifi.
Spend another 50-60 right now on a 80GB hdd and you can store them right on your Xbox.
No sig for you!!
buy a Media Center Extender For Xbox and get:a luation/devices/xboxextenderkit.mspx
2 AA batteries
Networking poster
from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/ev
As far as I can tell from the articles that I've read, you need to have XP media center edition. So , this doesn't really solve my problem -- which is namely wanting to have my music/pictures/whatever stored on the computer in my den (running xp pro), but be able to access it from the Xbox in my living room.
I can see the incentive for someone who already has a media center PC. Just not the holy grail i was looking for.
If you've modded your box already and hooked it up to your PC, then you can already do this. My sister-in-law was competing at the Hawaii Ironman this past weekend, and IMNorth America has a streaming video feed set-up at the finish line, that most folks would watch on their PC. We watched it on our tv, and saw her finish her race (and recorded it for her).
I just want the PVR functionality (and more streaming stations with higher quality video). Then I can cancel my cable. Mwahahaha!
"Content's a bitch."
I'm sure MS won't include support for the nice open-source codec XviD.
This is a great example of what companies do when a product nears the end of its life-cycle. Get as much money out of your current client base as you can before moving on to the "next big thing."
This is a stroke of marketing genius. In retrospect, obvious as hell. Sony and Nintendo can't be far behind -- they'd need a partner, though.
We'll be able to Tivo out the BSOD, how quaint.
All-in-all an interesting idea... these are sort of the remote "dumb" terminals to connect to your Media Center or Home Theater (file servering/tv recording/music downloading) master PC.
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
Xbox media center extenders have been around for a LONG time before xbmc. I just knew people would think they were ripping them off. They were at CES last year and i've seen them along time before that.
It would piss me off because I hear about xbox media center and think microsoft finally released it.
we'll see how it fares on the *major* protected media content: live TV. After all, wouldn't want a hack to block advertisements on TV like we do in Firefox.
I have a feeling the tests we've seen so far will seem quaint in retrospect.
"Remember back in the day when you could chip a game console and only get a threatening letter?" said one inmate to the other.
Now this would make XBMC fully complete. Instead of having to youthe xbox controller, if you could you the xbox media center remote to control XMMC, then that would justify getting the xbox media center extender for me....forget the MS software, just the hardware to better enable XBMC
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
unless you have a jones for MMP 2005. You have to have way too much tme on your hands to want this. Of course there are way cheaper ways to play media files off PC's. Hey what's that TV-out thing on my video card?
I'm probably in the minority in a tech-oriented site like this, but I think Microsoft might have some type of grand plan to expand beyond Windows and Office. Yeah/neah?
I'll never say something like that until they start selling xboxes that don't need modchips. The MOD community isn't just about creating unincluded features, they are about freedom, and this is something Microsoft will never catch on to.
and by "freedom" we mean free games for all!
Today: Windows Media Center Extender
Next: MSN/Instant Messaging Extender (comes with a MS keyboard!)
Then...
Outlook Express Extender
Windows XP Home Extender
...and voilà, Microsoft has embraced and extended the PC hardware market.
Uh.... this is an additional piece of hardware. You also need a Media Center PC.
a luation/devices/xboxextenderkit.mspx :
Yes, you do need a Media Center PC. I'll give you that. However this XBox Extenders is wholly software:
From http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/ev
Media Center Extender for Xbox is a packaged software product from Microsoft that runs as an Xbox game. With a wired or wireless connection to the Media Center PC, the Xbox console now allows you to enjoy the digital entertainment media from the PC when and how you want.
Basically, they took the Xbox Media Center functionality, rewrote or fixed it up to work only with Media Center 2005's protocols, and are selling it with a remote. Making a standard non-hacked XBox into a Remote Media Playback device to work with the Media Center PC.
They're hitting this on all fronts. Note that they have stopped requiring Win XP/MCE to be bundled with PC's, and are selling it separately now. You can buy a Retail copy of MCE 2005. Then you can use this XBox software and/or individual set top boxes to wire the whole house up to use one MCE PC as the server for all the storage and such. It holds everything: Music, movies, pictures, and then it's all available throughout the home on one interface, with various types of boxes. Kid has an xbox in his room, you have a set top box in yours, main room has the PC running MCE, everything is wireless G, everybody can watch different things.
It's a good setup if they can make it work. People have been wanting this sort of thing out of Tivo and such for years, and Microsoft looks to have mostly beat them all to the punch.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
"This addition is basically what XBMC already does"BETTER "and has done for"EVER...
See, you have to add some bias on your comment... we're on Slashdot, mate, have no shame 8p
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
How many people actually have Windows Media Center PCs? I don't see why they can't get rid of this hybrid OS, and just release a single application you can download to allow this. I seriously doubt anyone is going to run out and buy the Xbox software and a new OS (Windows Media Center) just to do this. Giving me Xbox software that directly interfaced with a standard XP/XP-Pro machine, however, sounds a little more tempting.
A sub-conscious thought bubbled to the top of the stack while I was reading this article:
So what?
And Not even for the same reasons that are being brought up here.
Right now, I've got a DishPVR that sorts through the TWENTYFIVE THOUSAND hours of programming a week (150x24x7)...of which, I'll see maybe 15 hours that I want to see, the part of the year that the programming isn't a rerun.
Otherwise, I get my entertainment off the net, reading books, RSS feeds, The _occasional_ DVD purchase (LOTR), etc.
But the point is: There's SUCH a HUGE firehose of information vying for my time that a portable PVR, or Xbox remote video viewer, or streamed T.V. to my Cellphone just doesn't light my lucky like they want it to.
I predict this is going to be another 'Tablet PC' marketing push. It's a lot of bells and whistles and will amount to a bunch fo companies losing a lot of money.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Soon I'll be able to take a piss into my Xbox while warming up my Poptart with the integrated toaster. Everyone is talking about extending the market... what ever happened to making a game machine for, hmm, exclusively gaming?
As I suggested before, if MS came out with a media player for Xbox that will function as it does on a PC (allow me to play DiVX/XViDS/Mp3s/etc.) I would run out and buy a copy instantly.
Instead, Microsoft puts out a Media Player that requires you to have a PC! That's absurd. If you already have a Media Centric-PC why would you want your Xbox to play your movies when your PC can do it just fine without the extra electricity.
Microsoft has dropped the ball on this one, so people like me who want to view movies from Xbox or over a network share will end up modding the Xbox and then opening ourselves to the new arsenal of games on Torrents and such. Thanks MS!
Hay now, party people, this is not a bad idea. How many old game consoles do you have in your basement? I have many... all doing nothing. XBox 2 will replace my current console, so what do I do with the old? I think it's great that a company is finally giving people options post system obsolescence. ..and sure you can easily mod your system and run something comparable or perhaps even better, which many of us, as geeks, will or have done. However, the Microsoft machine is actually hooking up the average joe with an option a monkey (or even lemur)could handle. If the XBox Media Center add-on isn't a great answer, I gotta tell you, it is at least a great start. Now if I could only find someone to fix my laserdisc player....
A hungry man will tell you anything if you give him a cookie.
Dont click on link, just another porn derailment.
-DrMyke
"mmmmmmmmm, doughnuts" - H.J.Simpson; super genius
If everyone would stop the microsoft bash train and look for a second they would see that if you would update to SP2 and Media Center 10 you can download a update called Media Center Connect, which lets Windows Media Player 10 connect wirelessly to any UPnP device. Why is this cool? Because thats what they are doing to the XBOX. Making it a UPnP Device. Which means I can access my 250 gig hard drive that is full of TV shows legally captured with my ATI card and play them back at random without more wires. Its actually a cool little product. Media Center 10 will play every format you can throw at it but OGG, which no one uses, and AAC, which is the apple standard, but thats like 2% of the total digital media market. Get with the program people. Microsoft isn't that bad. I run Windows XP for weeks at a time, only to turn it off to upgrade a piece of hardware or something like that.
I have an XBox, ... she lives in California now though.
-DrMyke
"mmmmmmmmm, doughnuts" - H.J.Simpson; super genius
I <3 teh microsoft!!!
does... How nice. My "media center" cost me 50 bucks and a little bit of time to solder some wires.
I'm willing to bet $50 dollars, that some idiot at Microsoft heard about MythTV and its ability to do that for the longest time, took the idea to his boss [not mentioning where he got the idea from], who thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, so he got his bonus and signed a bunch of papers so Microsoft Legal could make up a bunch of patents for the idea...
Isn't the xbox supposed to be hooked up to a tv anyways ? So, change the channel to watch tv...
:)
Life can be so simple..
How is it different, from say, putting Linux on the XBox and using something like MythTV?
They own ComCast, too - how can any company expect to compete with the end-to-end Microsoft media monopoly, except on Microsoft's terms?
--
make install -not war
My colleague linked me to this story, as I reminded him how much I wish someone would go on a trust-busting hunt for Ticketmaster's throat. Tie up a human being staring at a half-broken terminal for 20 minutes with a line behind you, and the convenience fee is three bucks. Do it on-line and the fee is triple that? Please.
My colleague points out that everyone's always suing Microsoft, who has only a perceived monopoly in many areas (perception = fear, liberatarian concern about prior restraint, etc.), whereas Ticketmaster has an absolute Monopoply and abuses everyone with it. WTF?
I wish Microsoft would take on Ticketmaster.
too bad I'd have to sacrafice one of my machines to the windows and bill gates altar to use it
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
I wouldnt trust watching TV using some kind of Microsoft hardware, well, not unless I had a small keypad with 'ctrl, alt and delete' on it.
Thats a point, I've never used an Xbox, does it have 'ctrl, alt and delete' buttons on it somewhere?
This is odd.. how does it fit in with Microsofts Next Gen system strategy. Who's gonna want a NeX Box which is confirmed to not have a hard drive, when they can have a full entertainment system with Halo 2 for less. That's going to have to be one heck of a graphics improvement, and I think that they're at point where huge increases in proccessing power will only result in a small improvement.
What bugged me was the code overhead. Still, I got to play Need for Speed just fine on it, which was quite a delight to me. And this is essentially what this pair that M$ is offering really is.
Having used Linux for a little over a year, and being a one-time (okay, STILL)OS/2 junkie it's been on my mind for a while: Why hasn't anyone developed a distro streamlined for the types of things M$ is doing. I would LOVE if I could choose to boot my SuSE in either 'work' or 'game' mode.
I mention OS/2 because that's one of the things IBM forgot, and it seems a lot of FOSS programmers are ignorant of too: computers are operated by PEOPLE. Sometimes people just want to plug in and go, others, like me, once we got it going we want to tinker and learn how it works. That is to say, I want to play right off the bat, but I also want to learn about how it all works when I get tired of playing.
While I appreciate many of the games I can get for Linux, imagine the power a unified 'game spec' OS could provide. No wasted daemon running and an API that ANY game programmer can aquire without costly license overhead! This would lower the bar for new game developers, and create a market wherein nobody would have to sign an exclusive development deal (SNES, X-Box, and PS-2 have platform specific titles).
I'm no programmer, but I'm sure this is possible. Pre-linking libraries, and/or a simplified gentoo-type build process coupled with a 'portage' or 'apt-get' type of utility could extend the life of the hardware.
And the icing on the cake? A solid REASON why America's (or any other country's) youth would want to buy a "build your own game console and save a bundle" book/kit to learn about computers and IP laws!
Kinda like the late seventies and early eighties all over again. :)
Seriously. It is.
This is why Microsoft was so eager to get X-Boxes into every home they could, regardless of the loss. Games? Pfah. They had the Media Center coming, and the X-Box was the way to get it into houses without having to sell PC's.
Microsoft's strategy for survival is clear and it is all-encompassing. Screw the OS; they want a piece of the DRM-sweet pie for every song, every film clip, every TV program, every movie played in the world on a digital box. Even if Linux eventually supplants Windows in some fashion, they will own the DRM of media files. They've been moving behind the scenes for years now, arm-twisting the music/movie/cable people into adopting MS DRM. It's in Longhorn, sure, but they aren't just settling for that. Longhorn is just a piece that fits into all the other pieces to come.
I can imagine certain channels that "cant be found", that just happen to have had some falling out with microsoft...
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
Or maybe the first decision you should make is to lear the fucking English language. Apostrophe in a possesive, threw, not through in, and get a life while you're at it. Of course, we can't be asked to expect much from a wiener who uses numbers in the place of letters.
Check out my foes list to see who is so retarded that they can't use the signature line!!!
Using the proven "UDE softmod" method, all you need is a rented game, a homemade USB2Xbox adapter and a USB thumbdrive to mod your Xbox. Total cost: $5-10
But if you have an Xbox with the newer BIOS that doesn't have the font buffer underflow, won't you have to boot from the rented game and borrowed USB thumbdrive every single time?
K .... I have to jump into the midst of the fray here, sword drawn and what not .... I have glimpsed through the replies to this article, and many of them are of the "blah blah ... wants to be TiVo ... wah wah" variety. No one really stands firm on the whole Live TV over Ethernet thing, though.
My home is a little hard to cable. The cable provider wants to drill holes all over my house and poke cable through. I can find no one to crawl around the crawlspace and see if that is a better option, and I myself have acute claustrophobia. Now, I have at least three bedrooms and the garage that I would like to have Television, but I don't want holes drilled through my walls, I mean come on who would?
I have been halfheartedly trying to determine if VideoLAN could somehow be made to do something along these lines, but my biggest problem is I don't understand how the tuners break out the necessary 6 MHz slices for the encoded programming. Ergo, I want to be able to have different channels on every room in the house.
Now it looks like MS has the ability in MCE to do this? So that each set top box/Xbox is receiving a different channel, from one server, with one tuner? To me this is huge. To all the sarcastic wits saying "It will let me watch Live TV, on my TV??" I say "Yes Please!"
I already have WLAN in place feeding computers in every room of the house. So adding WLAN capable set top boxes is just another networking component and it will let me feed all the TV's through a single non-split coax. The cable company tells me, see, that they need to run several lines, and amplifiers to get what I want? As much as I dislike MS I don't currently have a single Windows PC anywhere in the house Sounds like I need to pick up MCE and start working with it.
Though, if someone can point to some extremely good sources of information so I can understand how to make VideoLAN encode the entire Freq stream from the tuner so I can break it back out to 5 different televisions, I'm still willing to keep the OS of Evil out my house. Otherwise, I'm tired of listening to my step-daughter gripe hourly about not getting to watch her Disney programming because my wife is watching Survivor and I want to be watching the Sci-Fi channel.
"Genius may shine aloof and alone, like a star, but goodness is social, and it takes two men and God to make a Brother."
You mean I can pay $80 to get the same functionality I have had for almost a year now with the free XBMC, with one exception: I have to go out and purchase XP MCE to run on the backend? Pathetic. Give me the free XBMC on a software modded XBox, plus an old PC running Linux on the backend. A far less expensive solution, and one that I have been using now for almost a year.
Microsoft, this is too little too late and too costly.
Seriously, it's a $80 version of Media Player that has half the use.
Just unplug the xbox if you want to watch TV.. problem solved.. maybe I should patent it.
MS war on TV's :-) Now that Saddamn is gone, let us
take on TVs.
okok, to get this straight.
:
:
i have two devices here
- xbox + 120gb hdd and xbmc
this puts me in position to sit on the couch and have _all_ "king of queens" and "married with children" episodes available on my fingertip.
I can watch dvds, i can watch xvids with multiple audio streams i have spdif....
this is something you all (except the pvr people) will never get!! stay on the side and start whining now.
second device
- nokia dbox2 with softcam and ethernet.
how do you watch 3000 crypted channels then?
do you bey a pvr with cam modules for a 1000 bucks ?
i laugh about you (except pvr people), and i laugh about people buying this crap and start getting tears when they see my "installation".
oh and xbmc users do have this since years, you just talk about it today.
We've seen this coming for over 4 years. Microsoft has been quietly collecting digital rights to a large chunk of the worlds' fine art. Wanna display a jpg of the Mona Lisa on your web site? Someday the M$oft lawyers will come calling...
Regards,
BubbaJon