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What Might Have Happened To Windows Media Center
Phopojijo writes: Microsoft has officially dropped Windows Media Center but, for a time, it looked like Microsoft was designing both Windows and the Xbox around it. That changed when Vista imploded and the new leadership took Windows in a different direction. Meanwhile, Valve Software and others appear to be tiptoeing into the space that Microsoft sprinted away from.
Microsoft, Google, Apple, these kind of companies are too big, have tons of money and have their own cartels. If Microsoft wants to, they can resurrect Media Center in three months and force it down the throat of each and every customer they have. These companies have practically limitless power over their customers, since these are already invested and tied into their infrastructure. Apple could make all iPhones and Macs neon-pink from one day to the other and nobody would be able to do much against it. Sure, new customers might be repelled, but if you have a quasi-monopoly with total control over the infrastructure, even that barely matters..
Kodi started life as XBMC. Full-featured, open source, free, what's not to love?
First, I think many GUIs should be provided by MS and should be optional for users.
For example, if you want the traditional XP type desktop, I think MS should permit that for the foreseeable future. I'm not saying it should be butt ugly but the same buttons should be in the same places that do the same things. You can update the look of those buttons or add animations but the same buttons in the same places.
Also have a tablet interface for people that have touch screens etc.
Also have a tv remote type interface.
Also, a purely text based interface is good.
If I missed something, then just assume I suggested it. Just put them all in there.
Second, there is no good reason for the Xbox to be incompatible with the PC and the PC incompatible with the xbox. Xbox games shoul run natively on a windows machine. They are intentionally made to not work that way and that's a dumb move. Why do that? To push your console? But the console doesn't make money. The GAMES make money. Not the console. The console actually loses money initially and it takes years for the company to so much as break even on the initial console costs.
Now, a possible compromise here is that MS could say "we will permit any Xbox game to run on any windows machine but we will only permit MS approved products to run on the Xbox. And then you make part of that approval process that the company agrees to give a percentage of game sales to MS. I believe this is how Xbox games work. So MS would lose NOTHING by doing this. They'd actually start getting a cut of licensing money for PC games effectively. And porting games back and forth wouldn't be required because they'd effectively be inter-compatible systems.
Another fun thing they could do with Xboxes is permit them to work as totally normal PCs. Again, I basically think the Xbox should just run windows with TV centric GUI. But if I want to surf websites, do my taxes, or check my email on my xbox, it should be something that works basically the same way as on the PC. Why not? That would if anything improve the value of the xbox.
MS could annihilate Sony with something like this... bridging the gap between the console and the PC so that they're the same system. That would mean
Third, I'd like to see more tablets and even phones running desktop operating systems with fully accessible memory. I'd like the firmware chip for example to just be a micro SD card hiding under the battery. So if something goes wrong you can pull the stupid chip, pop it into another machine, sort out whatever went wrong, and then put it back into the phone.
here people are going to point out "but the gui on a desktop is wrong for a phone"... No shit? What is the title of my comment? My point is that you can have many GUIs for the same operating system. I'd like to see MS really grasp that and possibly during installation query the user to choose which GUI they want the system to default to on boot. It should be something that can be hot switchable without having to log off first or something.
Basically what we're talking about here are different versions of Explorer.exe. Have explorer be the old school GUI and then have a different version for whatever other variation you're interested in.
MS could instantly have more apps on their phone than any of their competitors because all the windows apps would run on one of their phones. Now sure, most of the GUIs for most of those programs are going to be inappropriate. However, just as MS can make multiple GUIs for Windows, so too can you make multiple GUIs for those programs. Ideally, MS would pave the way there by having different GUIs for their Office Suite etc.
Now see this in operation in the corporate world... imagine if corporations could put desktop apps on your phone?
Here people are going to point out the whole x86/arm thing about the various CPUs not being inter-compatible etc. I am aware. I don't credit the notion that you can't put an x86 CPU in a phone or tablet. The only thing that would be r
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I'm pretty much happy if XBMC works, which is basically a portable app.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
XBMC demo on Linux Smart TV Box
Valve is not tiptoeing into anything, they got a boot in and they're coming in after it.
Microsoft, as ever, decided to play the hardass with users and lost. If they had embraced both Xbox and the PC solution then it would be "Steam what? Valve, they're the Half-Life guys, right?" And maybe, just maybe, we wouldn't even have to suffer uplay or origin.
Too much is being made of the Media Center connection here. Games for Windows(tm) also puts the games into the games explorer. That's a genuinely cool feature that I actually use, and I wish more games would play along. If you're going to bother doing a game for windows, you might as well make it as much like a Game for Windows(tm) as you can, so long as it's not expensive or difficult. That part is probably pretty easy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The high fidelity way to steal content was to write an audio/video driver that installs itself between the code and the device forming a T. Then silently record the stream before delivering it to the audio/video cards. So they went ahead and created the "protected audio/video path" concepts, signed drivers, accepted possible incompatibility with all the existing devices as the price to pay. ??AA did not like Apple's dominance and being forced sell tracks dollar a pop with Apple getting 30 cents commission. iTunes was allowing people who bought songs to make CDs (yes, CDs were quite dominant at that time) etc. So the logic of Microsoft was quite sound, and it makes sense among the suits.
But they forgot the crucial "IF" that formed the foundation of the logic. Can anyone thwart the alleged pirates? Even if the protected signed drivers stopped this method, there was always the analog hole. One can record with reasonable fidelity audio out. Similarly, with more difficulty, the video out too.
The entire concept of Vista was to take command of the living room entertainment center the way MS-Office took command of the corporate desktops. They could not deliver ??AA what they wanted and were promised: a piracy-proof entertainment platform. But it complicated the OS to such an extent it was very unstable. This on top the par-for-the-course bungling of MS suits. Certifying under powered machines as vista capable to play favorites with intel over AMD, that sort of thing.
The damage lingers on to this day. There is a service that runs on all Windows platform that watches all the code crashes and pop up the dialog "I saw something crash? Do you want to try it in WinXP compatibility mode?" That service collects data all day and phones home at night. Our company consolidated three locations into one new building. Some 1500 computers phoned home using the same gateway at the same time. Random crashes on machines that used to run for weeks without rebooting. Traced it to this damned thing. Somehow 500 phone-homes per gateway was ok, at 1500 it crashed randomly. There are hundreds of such things buried deep inside OS due to Vista fiasco.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Well, it's enough for me if it took it away from something I might actually have some use for and MS didn't put down their usual consumer-unfriendly, DRM riddled idiocy as the de facto standard.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Give it time, eventually they'll just be like they all become. Look at Google, they used to be the poster child for great ideas and awesome employment options. And how do we look at them today?
It's usually with new management that corporations lose their ways and turn greedy. Mostly because those locust managements have no ties to the corporation they head, for all they care it could be computer games, fast food or baby seal clubbing that makes the money.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The first replacement that comes out that works 1/10th as well as my media center will get my money. So far nothing works with my cable card because 100% of the channels are drm'd and the need for a tuning adapter to all the channels that I don't really watch anyway.
There are some things in MCE that just flat out rock as well, the excellent guide, ease of recording, just everything. [Well except for the time it forgets to record your favorite show for no apparent reason]
So it looks like I'm going to keep it running 7 until something changes and peeps are allowed to connect to the cable card with little to no hindrance.
Am I trolling because I said nice things about Valve or because I said mean things about Valve or because I said nice things about Microsoft or because I said mean things about origin or uplay?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Good luck doing any sort of remote computing while your tablet is away from Wi-Fi or once your phone has reached the end of its data plan with 3 days left in the month.
I have IP TV provided by my Telco.
The PVR UI has a very "Microsofty" feel about it - Wouldn't surprise me if Cisco / Atlanta Scientific licensed it from MS.
Graphics are useless if nobody is willing to buy a $60 Bluetooth controller for a $2.99 game. Touch screens are great for point-and-click genres but not much else. Without good input, graphics are a movie, and Netflix already owns that space.
there is no good reason for the Xbox to be incompatible with the PC and the PC incompatible with the xbox.
Other than that Intel was unwilling to cut costs on PC components to hit the price target that Microsoft sought. This didn't change much until the eighth generation (PlayStation 4 and Xbox One), when AMD offered its "Jaguar" laptop chipset to Sony and Microsoft at console prices.
we will permit any Xbox game to run on any windows machine but we will only permit MS approved products to run on the Xbox.
Let's say Microsoft makes Xbox games work on Windows. If end users buy Xbox games and play them on a gaming PC running Windows, they have no incentive to buy more Xbox games when other Windows games are available to them. But if users instead have to buy Xbox hardware to play Xbox games, users are more likely to buy more Xbox games to play on their Xbox hardware.
Another fun thing they could do with Xboxes is permit them to work as totally normal PCs.
That's one thing Windows Media Center was trying to be.
But if I want to surf websites, do my taxes, or check my email on my xbox, it should be something that works basically the same way as on the PC.
It already does. IE runs on Xbox, and IE can run websites, webmail, and even web-based tax preparation.
Why not?
If you were referring to native mail clients or native tax preparation, then developers could make games through the subset of Windows that the Xbox runs without tithing to Microsoft.
I'd like the firmware chip [in cellular phones] to just be a micro SD card hiding under the battery. So if something goes wrong you can pull the stupid chip, pop it into another machine, sort out whatever went wrong, and then put it back into the phone.
Is that even legal under national radio communication regulators' type approval guidelines? I thought devices had to be robust against end-user attempts to modify the devices to transmit or receive on prohibited frequencies or with prohibited power levels.
Now sure, most of the GUIs for most of those programs are going to be inappropriate.
Non-technical end users prefer the simplicity of a system that shows a list of all-and-only appropriate applications.
Why do we have to use ARM cpus?
Because end users have invested in existing proprietary applications for iOS or Android OS and expect to remain able to run them on new devices. These applications are compiled for ARM, either completely in the case of iOS or the NDK portions in the case of Android OS. It's in fact the same reason that x86 has stuck around so long: people expected to run both existing proprietary DOS apps and Windows 3.1 apps, people expected to run both existing proprietary Windows 3.1 apps and Win32 apps, and people expected to run both existing proprietary Win32 apps and Win64 apps. And these applications were compiled for ARM in the first place because iOS and Android OS debuted before Intel had a credible Atom competitor.
It sounds to me more like the x86 processors just need an additional feature added to them to make them more mobile friendly.
For the reason I just stated, this "additional feature" would need to involve emulation of ARM binaries.
"I know that people's lives are not their own; it is not for them to direct their steps."
--Jeremiah 10:23, NIV.
Unless they're stupid enough to need an App Store to steer their choices for them, I guess.
Apparently there is such a thing as "analysis paralysis". People do prefer someone with more expertise to steer their choices. Otherwise, there would be more PCs in the living room.
I find lack of interest in Media center hard to believe despite intentional action on Microsoft's behalf to kill it. The media extender market collapsed because MS simply made it impossible for extenders to exist. What if there was a cheap HDMI dongle that could stream from media center? None of this would be an issue and they could have existed if MS didn't continuously fuck over multiple companies producing hardware for media center.
I've had a TIVO for a while and in the last month they pushed an update that removed all RSS video feeds which was more than half of what I ever watched. The rss feeds don't require TiVo infrastructure to support they just removed it because they could and felt like it and now I'm fucked.
Anymore I'm beginning to realize that I don't really care about video broadcasts. If I never see another broadcast in my life I would be ok with that.
With all "convergence" memes going around and basically replacing everything with "Internet" I just hope the remaining people who care don't let a handful of mega content companies Netflix/Hulu/Youtube..etc. own everything. A DVR with some manner of "RSSP2P" backend would provide anyone with content to distribute a cheap way to do it not controlled by anyone... which I believe is important over the long haul if for no other reason than keeping mega content honest.
Yes, consoles have consistent hardware but that doesn't mean much. That just means you have one version of the operating system with one set of drivers that are slightly better debugged than what the PC people deal with. So what.
Some things differ between video card manufacturers. NVIDIA GPUs are more efficient at some things, AMD at others. This is why Bitcoin miners preferred AMD before mining switched to FPGAs and ASICs: AMD's shader instruction set was more efficient at SHA-1 than NVIDIA's. And different video cards support different forms of texture compression. A console guarantees a shader ABI and a texture format, so you can ship precompiled shaders and compressed textures on disc. Console operating systems also tend to be far lighter than contemporary PC operating systems, so you can fit a lot more into the same 64 MB of RAM (Xbox era), 512 MB of RAM (Xbox 360 era), or 8 GB of RAM (Xbox One era).
I'm just saying that there is a net gain if the xbox is actually just a streamlined subsidized by licenses gaming PC.
Is it a "net gain" for end users not to be able to find worthwhile games among the self-published derivative amateur crap that Nintendo has in the past compared to the rejects on American Idol ? Because that's what floods Apple's App Store, which costs a developer $1000 for the hardware plus $100 per year.
Discovery of worthwhile apps is ultimately a search problem. Consoles have traditionally solved it by whitelisting only the best apps. Mobile has left it unsolved. How would you recommend to solve it?
The reason things are the way they are is because of console history.
Such as the flood of crapps that the Atari 2600 got in 1983, which turned North American retailers and end users off of video gaming entirely until 1985 (NYC)/1986 (nationwide) when Nintendo introduced its NES console with a whitelist mechanism to ensure that the worst products don't occupy valuable shelf space or player attention.
[The game console] is a legacy business model from a time when gaming PCs didn't really exist
The Commodore 64 was what you'd call a "gaming PC" in the early 1980s. Its graphics were better than ColecoVision, almost as detailed as NES. Its main fault was long loading times because most developers stuck to disk or (worse) cassette tape instead of cartridge.
I suspect [Microsoft would] be hit with more monopoly lawsuits were they [to fully unify Xbox with Windows]
I don't see how. Companies like Valve and Sony would be free to do the same thing. Steam OS is based on Debian GNU/Linux, and the Orbis OS that powers PlayStation 4 is based on FreeBSD.
Google is refusing to make a Youtube or Chrome app for Metro, and Firefox (unwisely) decided to not make a browser for Metro.
It's hard to make an efficient browser when the API sandbox does not let you implement a JIT engine for JavaScript. Like the iOS public API, the Windows Runtime API lacks a counterpart to VirtualProtect. Thus like an iOS app, a Windows Runtime app is subject to a strict W^X policy that prohibits it from translating JavaScript code into efficient native code to execute it. (Source) Or do you think end users would be happy with an interpretive JavaScript core instead of Google's V8 or Mozilla's IonMonkey?
I already have a launcher. It's called my operating system.
How well does the stock launcher work, say, if your PC is in the living room next to the TV? I tried a Windows 8 PC with an Xbox 360 Controller, and though games worked with it, the Windows 8 Start screen did not recognize it. This despite that the Windows Start screen is a rehash of Microsoft's own Xbox 360 Start screen.
even today a PC without Internet is mostly useless.
"Without Internet" meaning no connection for minutes to hours, or "without Internet" meaning no connection for days to months? There's a big difference between an intermittent connection and an expectation of no connection at all. Case in point: I carry a small laptop with me while I ride the city bus to and from my day job so I can work on hobby coding projects. I carry local API documentation so I can keep working even though the bus does not provide Wi-Fi. I could go an entire 3-hour charge without Internet, so long as I sync up when I get back to Wi-Fi at home.
cable big fail of cable card helped kill it. satellite tuners as well dish and directv where working with M$ on usb tunes for windows pc and they did not come out.
Also there is satellite ci cards but dish / directv will push hard to NOT let people use them just give out a smart card to use with them.
[Frontier's pay-TV offering] changed a few things, including the DRM settings for ALL channels they carried except for the must carry ones
Then record only must-carry channels. Call Frontier support and ask why none of your favorite channels are set to "copy freely". If they feed you a line of baloney, ask to be transferred to the retention department because you're dropping pay TV from your package.
Oh yeah, as long as we have an enemy, everything's fine. Must be really awesome to have a simple world view, life is certainly a lot easier and more comfortable.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Your game comment didn't address that the console itself doesn't make money but rather the licensing agreements that game makers have with console makers. Console users pay more for games. Typically around 60 dollars per game while PC players tend to pay substantially less. The majority of that price difference goes to the console makers and constitutes their actual profits.
Let me rephrase: If console-compatible games are not console-exclusive, then people aren't going to buy a console to play its games. This opens a possibility that people will buy a PC instead of a console with a launcher to cover some (but not all) of the convenience issues. Thus console makers won't get their cut of game sales because people are going to buy PC-exclusive games for their PC instead of the more expensive console-compatible games.
Further consider that there are projects like Project Aria
I was initially confused. "Aria" means other things, such as the "accessible rich Internet applications" spec, while you meant Project Ara. But good luck getting carriers to offer any sort of financing for the Project Ara hardware.
As to most non-technical users, they are going to appreciate being able to use the same program across all platforms especially if the developers adapt the UI so it dynamically defaults to given UI elements in different contexts.
But if an application listed in a device's app store fails to adapt its UI, non-technical end users won't know this. They will think the device is broken. Therefore the device will have to hide devices that don't already have an adapted UI if the device maker wants to preserve its reputation.
For one thing, all the popular mobile apps will be ported to whatever phone OS becomes dominant. But really, you're going to get so much more by gaining access to the desktop apps that complaining about losing the mobile apps is mind boggling.
A new phone OS can't become dominant without mobile apps. And there are a lot of key mobile apps whose developers intentionally shun desktop computers, such as Vine, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and some people's favorite games.
I had not used it in so long I forgot it even existed. Too many other and better free choices available.
Sigh....has NOBODY here even tried the Windows 10 Beta? Hell has nobody even tried Windows 8/8.1? The reason they don't really need WMC anymore is that they already HAVE a perfectly good 10 foot UI in the Metro UI, fuck IMHO its really the only thing other than tablets that Metro is good for, and of course if that isn't "media centric" enough there is always MediaPortal which is quite good, along with whatever they renamed XBMC to.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I have used it. The Video app in both 8.1 and 10 Preview - which I have on my new WinBook tablet. One thing I think the Video app could use is Playlists, which iOS supports. On my iPad - which I use in the car as an iPod - I have some music videos included in playlists that I can play, even though they are music videos rather than audio songs. On the Winbook, there is no way to make Playlists in the video app, and the Music app doesn't recognize the video formats the way iOS Music app does.
DRM? I've yet to figure out what Microsoft's DRM policy is. On my Android tablet, none of the video downloading apps that I've found in the Google Play store will allow downloading YouTube videos, since that's against YouTube's terms of service. On the Windows tablet, I downloaded an app called Hyper, which has sometimes allowed me to do that, but has often failed, w/o giving me that same message. I'm not sure whether it's b'cos Google has done a better job blocking such downloadds, or b'cos the app itself had bugs.
I remember having WMC on Vista back in 2008. I had DTV tuners and told it to record a TV show off air for me. It allowed it to be scheduled but when time came to record, it did not due to DRM. Gotta love it! Also I bought a media extender that wouldn't work over 802.11G, it required N at the time....another bone head move. Kodi for me now.
Copy the address for the video you want to download, paste it into Savedeo and choose whether you want the vid in SD, HD, hell you can choose MP3 if its a tune or you want it as a podcast...oh and you're welcome ;-)
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Yeah. Back in Vista/win7 days my media center hopes were dashed when I discovered that the cable channels routinely set drm on everything to no copy.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
So how do you suggest to solve the "mostly economic problems" of data caps so that users of apps can retain access to these large data sets rather than working around them by doing without?
With Desktops you can run into some problems here because it isn't convenient to move them around. But that isn't a huge problem really. How many PC gamers go to lan parties on occasion and you're not just moving your computer from one room to the other but taking it to a friend's house.
A LAN party is something that one plans in advance, not something your kids can just up and do after school.
If you want to fuck over console users and make it harder for developers to reach as many players as possible... then keep it how it is... It serves no justifiable purpose in the existing market with the existing technology.
The North American video game market went into a recession in 1983-1984. This was in part caused by a loss of consumer confidence due to a flood of bad games for the Atari 2600 console. People who wanted a good new game could not find a good new game. If console makers were to stop "mak[ing] it harder for developers to reach as many players as possible", they too would be flooded with crap, as I explained in another comment. Can you name a particular "existing technology" that would help an open console avoid another crash like that of 1983?
MS started breaking WMC long before Vista came around. I used WMC a lot. I've had Vista. WMC has been falling apart for many years. Mostly because as you described for one reason or another they made the decision to value corporate interests over their consumers. I've been tinkering with WMP and WMC for years using codecs and the like to try and get things to work. The best I get is that most things work. However no matter what I do, there will be stuff that just isn't compatible. About the only reason I use it is my remote is "compatible" with WMC. Every now again again, when I hit that file that no matter what I do (and at this point whatever I do seems to fix one, then break another format), I just give up and use VLC, as it just works. I'm actually really surprised that someone hasn't come along and replaced WMC by now as it has been a pretty big gap for a long time. Hopefully MS pulling the plug on WMC would prompt someone to make something better that isn't purposefully broken...