Media Center Control

As many of you know, I’m officially a Microsoft MVP for Digital Media. This means I’m fully qualified to geek out with hardware like the Windows Media Center Edition 2005. I sat in the fourth row yesterday morning at the launch event. If Bill Gates were any closer, I could’ve adjusted his glasses. We’ve been using the most recent Media Center Edition for several months now, and it’s served us quite well. It does everything a smart PVR should do, but didn’t offer much in terms of “value add” beyond being a PC to boot (literally). It wasn’t set to push people further away from their TiVo, so for the past few months, the Media team has been working hard to develop new audio and video hardware to further complement this Media Center thing. Did I buy into the newness of the Portable Media Center (PMC)? Not as quickly as those who do a lot of traveling. Media Center (2005) has a few compelling draws from what I could tell. First, a super-cool visual way to browse the movies that are currently playing in your TV channel lineup (it downloads cover art and lets you flip through them quickly). Then, they’ve given you the ability to listen to NPR shows on-demand - a service long overdue! The show stealer, in my opinion, was the new Xbox conduit; you can attach a device to your Microsoft game console, and with a network connection, you can control and use your Media Center remotely. It’s truly becoming more and more of a media center.

Jake and I walked around the vendor area for a while, recognizing brands and discovering what they have to offer to the digital entertainment realm. Get this: FYE is now set up so that you can walk into one of their stores, buy an album there, and have it sync with your account / computer at home automatically. I couldn’t convince the guy that it would have been far more convenient (and probably cheaper) to do the same thing at home. Remember, this is the Media Center - it’s supposed to be at the center of my media world. There was little talk about DRM, although the presentation wasn’t quite as transparent as I think they’d lead us to believe. It was set to illustrate what Microsoft is doing for the users, but the underlying tone was more “hey vendors, this is how much we love you.” Still, much props to the hard-working Digital Media team. Wmplugins got a face-lift (and RSS feeds), consumers got a new logo (PlaysForSure), listeners got more subscription choices, and non-English folks got their player. I’ll be sticking with my Media Center, and sticking things into my Media Center (like removable media and whatnot). I’ve just downloaded Media Center 2005 on MSDN, and will be installing that when I get a chance. Who knows when that’ll be? At least I know it’s recording the shows I’ll never have time to watch!