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Roadkill on the Convergence Highway
Duke Weber writes "Microsoft sometimes gets it right after three tries. Not so with Windows Media Center 2005. You do get a dancing Scooby Doo. You don't get much Media." From the article: "As a DVR, one tuner was just OK, with a second tuner working, it was still OK, provided you weren't too picky about mouths moving at the same time words came out. Out with the snazzy Realtek integrated sound on the ASUS-A8V motherboard. In with an Audigy 2ZS to lessen the load on the AMD 64 3000+ processor. More gadgets. That cured the synch. The picture still was no where close to a vintage Tivo. But it does keep track of the programs, important with a terabyte of disc."
The biggest issue with media centers is a very practical one: tuning. How do you tune channels from cable or satellite providers when a set top box provided by cable or satellite provider is essentially required? The "IR blaster" solution is inelegant at best, and gets even more inelegant if you want more than one tuner. That was Microsoft's biggest miscalculation in the media center strategy.
Conversely, the cable and satellite providers themselves will be able to provide one device that can record all of your digital content, AND acts as your set top box, AND has multiple tuners AND handles SD, HD, digital, and analog, AND doesn't require a large initial expenditure: most providers will give you all of this for under $10/month, in a turnkey solution that "just works". Granted, it's not as flexible and capable as your own box, but most will accept this tradeoff. Most won't even know there *was* a tradeoff.
But what of all your other media? Your music, your movies, your videos? Indeed, Apple's media center strategy is a novel one: it includes all traditional media center functions except perhaps the primary one: television recording. Instead, it's taken the bold next step: bypass the tuning issue and the recording issue entirely by bypassing the cable and satellite operators entirely, and delivering the content directly to you. The cable operators will still provide a service: it will just be bandwidth, and not content.
...as long as it's easier than MythTV to set up and cheaper than Tivo over 5-10 years, I'll do it.
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the only roadkill I see on the convergence highway will be the consumers.
I've never used Windows Media Center, but almost all of the problems he's complaining about sound like hardware problems, driver issues, or he chose the wrong hardware to begin with.
I have a feeling that if he had chosen his equipment better, or done a little more research before buying everything, he wouldn't have had the problems.
Besides, he's complaining about things like a broken S Video connector in his review, that is hardly Microsoft's fault.
Primal cravings make people do strange and stupid things. They made me build a Windows Media Center PC. ... snip ...
The first secret is that you need to scam your way into getting a copy of Windows XP Media Edition 2005, which is only sold to OEMs.
I bet if this guy tried to build a real TiVo, it might suck as well.
Perhaps windows media center is sold to OEMs only because they are the ones that know how the machines have to be built to work properly?
Reviews like this are why Apple will never license MacOS X for PCs.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
For me the big issue here is that the aim of a central server that controls all of your media means that people will have to all become system adminstrators. This is hardly likely, the idea of my Wife worrying about menus to record programmes off the TV is not the sort of thing I look forwards to. Something like a TiVo is perfect as its a TV device that intends to record programmes and nothing else. My wife's iPod is perfect to listen to music on even if there is the irritant of having to connect it to the PC (and this is an irritant for her) and finally actually having paper photos to hand around is what her and her friends like doing. We could have a digital home with me as the sys admin... but my wife would hate it.
The alternative of lots of seperate devices that do their jobs pretty well and have to communicate together clearly requires too much collaboration and innovation for those companies pushing the "Digital Home" vision around a central server.
Media Centre is a great example of a company trying to force an idea it think SHOULD make it billions down the throats of people who don't want it. Give us loosely coupled devices that work together seemlessly not videos that chase us around the house or a central server that needs constant administration and updating.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
and this article illustrates why. Hacking together a MCE box from parts is a masochistic enterprise. MS only sells MCE to OEMs who are willing to QA their setup (acronym overload!). This writer just got a taste of what QA at Dell and HP must feel like.
No its just that old axiom rearing its ugly head:
"Windows users have to defend their OS, everyone else can praise theirs."
He lost my interest when I found the pic of the destroyed s-video cable.
I've been in video since the 80's and I've seen that ONCE.
You have to be a complete idiot to break an s-video cable off like that, so I can't take anything else in the article seriously. I guess he breaks keyboard and mouse connectors off too?
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
I just wish Apple would produce a media center, because you know it would be refined and more then halfway decent. Doing what it does, and doing it well. Where as Bill Gates is notorious for making a wide range of products that just work poorly. Microsoft, the product name synonymous with mediocre. Want a phone OS, Desktop OS, or Media Center right now!? Then they'll have your $$$, because MediocreSoft (aka Microsoft) is there, doing what they do not well, but darn right OK enough to get your cash and nothing more.
But it seems that companies are doing it backwards, where they they want to be in a single spot and they're sending arrows out everywhere.
This doesn't seem like convergence to me...more like...diffusion.
I'll try to put asside the apparent anti-M$ bias in the article and read it for what it is; a complaint based on poor hardware choices and a lack of understanding for what a media center should be.
Its pretty universal amongst geeks that computers belong in the living room controlling everything from lights to music to tv to door alarms...or maybe that's just me. No one, and I do mean no one, has managed to put it all together in one EASY TO USE AND REASONABLY PRICED package. You've gotta go in knowing that's the case, and you've gotta go in with a clear sense of what you want to accomplish in your price point.
I've been running MCE 2005 for about 6 months now and its doing everything I want it to do with only one major issue, HD, and that's not Microsoft's fault...its a mix of congress and cable companies. With a moderately priced 3ghz box and 1gb of ram, and a paultry 120gb of storage, I can record/watch tv, burn shows to DVD, play my music, do a funky slide-show of my pictures...and then do all of those things upstairs in a room with only a tv and an MCE extender. Add to that a wireless keyboard/mouse, and I'm editing pictures and video on my 50" HDTV. All of that is accessible by the average joe non-geek, and I think that is the whole point.
Throw in some geeky tweaks and hacks, and we're talking about streaming HD content to the box with firewire (stupid content flags), ripping and streaming DVDs and playing Age of Empires III the way it was intended...50" of pure glory.
Back to the gripes of the article, I'm having a hard time feeling sympathy. Leave the AMD thing out of it, I'm sure they make a fine product.
-However, think AUDIO IN A MEDIA PC. What did you come up with, 16 bit Sound Blaster? One would assume that you'd want something phat like an Audigy or better.
-Then there is this idea that "As a DVR, one tuner was just OK[...]", sorry, but TiVo and all similar devices have 2 tuners as well, that's why you can record one show and watch another, that gripe doesn't hold water.
-I'm missing the problems recording VHS, never had any problems.
-ATI and HDTVs as monitors is the bane of all media pc's from what I understand. Yeah, ok, I'll buy into that being a valid gripe, but I tossed my X300 in the garbage where it belonged and went nVidia and all is well. S-Video for HD...err...the guy needs to smoke another one.
-The truly valid gripe is with music. The thing is that this is supposed to be accessible to non-geekers, so the default settings try to pull in all your music and catalog it for you. I've tried all sorts of auto-catalog software, and none have worked 100% on my collection. It's pretty darn easy to go into the settings for Media Player and UNCHECK A SINGLE BOX that says "Let Media Player Catalog My Music". After that, it will just use the standard tags, not try to rename andything, and refer to folder.jpg as the album cover. Easy easy easy.
I'm not saying its perfect, but when I think it needs to be said that this is the first OS/HW combo that has gone semi-mainstream in this realm, and pleanty have tried. Combine that with the fact the MS originally was INSISTING on OEM only so they could be sure the hardware could handle the load...but people complained...and now there are gripes that the hardware can't handle the load in non-OEM machines...err...
Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate
The future will be downloading your movies and shows to your computer, putting them on your iPod, and just docking your iPod where you want to view the media. Dock the iPod in your bedroom stereo for music, dock the iPod in your bigscreen TV to watch a movie.
The second medium will be just wirelessly streaming it from your computer with no iPod required. And I suspect Apple will pioneer both.
Having run XP MCE 2005 since it came out, I have to believe that this "review" is useless and the "reviewer" is clueless. There's several things in the article which, just one of them, could be a mistake, but all of them together make it seem like the reviewer is not qualified to review XP MCE.
First of all, the author thinks that the IR Blaster is a receiver. Secondly, the reviewer resorted to using S-Video over HDMI...then managed to break an S-Video cable. Not that PowerStrip is easy to use, but it seems that the author was incapable of using it.
As to adding music, I'm not sure what's wrong with the author's network, but I have about 100GB of music and MCE adds it relatively quickly - certainly in minutes, not days as the reviewer indicated.
I'm not sure what the reviewer's problem is with the radio - did he not realize you could manually select a station with the seek function?
As to the general problems relating to him implying it was sluggish on his PC (Audio Sync Problems, slow importing time, etc) something is clearly wrong with how he configured his PC - I have MCE 2005 running on a machine less than 1/2 the speed (P4 1.6GHz) and it runs great with two tuners. Is XP MCE perfect? No. But I've used TiVo, ReplayTV, MythTV and XP MCE and so far MCE is my favorite.
Anyway, I conclude that the reviewer is unqualified to offer a review on a product like this - especially because he blamed MCE for his faults/problems he took on by building his own box, rather than buying a prebuilt one. It's certainly not hard, as I did it, but clearly he had problems.
Now I know you're trolling. I *have* a Windows XP MCE 2005 machine, and there's nothing about MCE that makes it "superior" or "smoother" than any TV viewing on a Mac. It's pretty humorous that you'd say that. Please explain what you mean by this. Because I can get any number of PVR or tuner solutions for a Mac and they all work just fine.
Also, it's not going to be "20 years" (WTF?). Try more like 2. It's kinda funny that you think TV content will continue to be delivered the same old shitty, non-a-la-carte way it has been for a couple decades via cable? Oh, man, you've got some great vision there.
And um, anyone who chooses the Front Row model can also continue to watch their HD and whatever other TV they have access to IN ADDITION to downloaded content. And in case you haven't noticed, 320 x 240 is pretty damned close to standard definition content as it is. Have you even viewed a sample of it? (I suppose you're the type who will lie and say "yeah I did, and it was really shitty", even though it's actually damned good and every single reviewer so far has said so.
And the funniest thing is that you ask "what makes you think they'll make their content available", even though Apple was the first entity, EVER, to get ANY network to make ANY content available online. (Not to mention starting and continuing to operate by far the most successful online store in the parallel realm of music. You know, the same people who wouldn't be caught dead with their content online.)
Ahh, good ol' "Macs suck" trolls. Wouldn't be a good day on the internet without one.
...and another thing...
Perhaps the "builder" did not realize that Google Provides All. There is a site called The Green Button (I think its UK based), that is currently the best MCE forum around. There were a couple of instances where I wanted to do something the MCE didn't natively do and TGB provided me with solutions.
I'd say anyone who wants a more balanced oppinion of what MCE IS and what MCE IS NOT, should spend 20 minutes flipping through that forum and seeing what people are praising, griping about, and generally doing with MCE. Either that, or believe the (oh my god, I'm going to use this horrible term, I swore I never would, omg...) FUD.
Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate