Media Center not dead, but evolving

Life

1 April 2005

Microsoft to drop Media Center‘, in essence, was the headline that appeared on the UK-based online technology newswire, The Register, on the eve of America’s big fun technology bash, the Consumer Electronics Show, held last month in Las Vegas. This turned out to be a wildly exaggerated and inaccurate piece of speculation; Microsoft has not yet given up on its vision of facilitating multimedia access through PC technology sitting under every living room TV.

The plan to push the Media Center concept to consumers is still very much on track and an integral part of its business strategy, Microsoft has confirmed to PC Live! PC manufacturers everywhere can breathe a collective sigh of relief.

What I think threw The Register was Microsoft’s announcement of a number of new hardware and software developments under the umbrella of the Media Center brand at the Consumer Electronics Show. These suggested that you could still keep the PC in the bedroom or the study, use it for word processing or spreadsheets, while simultaneously streaming multimedia content from it and displaying it on a widescreen or portable TV in another room. This is the idea behind Microsoft’s Extender and Media Connect technologies.

One thing is quite clear, the Extender and Media Connect announcements by Bill Gates will give birth to a number of new wireless networking products that will allow a Media Center PC to connect to a number of different TVs in different locations around the home. The objective of sharing digital media content such as music, photos and video, has been combined with allowing primary productivity tasks to be carried out on the PC. Microsoft won’t develop the hardware itself, but will entrust that task to its hardware partners such as HP, Dell, Alienware and Winstron.

Behind the marketing smokescreen, Microsoft is clearly pushing a networked home agenda and it has already thrown far too much behind the Media Center to suddenly abandon it. The greatest appeal of the Media Center concept may rest with people who live in one room studio apartments and who don’t have room for a separate PC and TV. This market, in my view, would be pretty small in Ireland, or indeed in most countries, bar Singapore, Holland, Hong Kong or Japan. Assuming this to be true, it stands to reason that Microsoft needs to broaden the Media Center’s appeal – enter the connected home and corresponding raft of software and hardware networking add-ons for the Media Center operating system.

One concept that Microsoft has killed off is the smart display for the home. Codenamed ‘Mira’, this smart display device was discontinued, due in no small part, according to Clive Ryan, business group manager for the client and information worker, Microsoft, ‘to the huge amount of confusion that exists among consumers in determining the difference between tablet PC and the smart display’. Put simply, the tablet PC is a fully-fledged computer, the smart display was an LCD screen which could access multimedia content wirelessly from a PC.

Even without smart displays, the home network is still a powerful runner. Nevertheless, Microsoft and its partners will face stiff competition from the likes of Sony, Netgear and SMC who offer digital media receivers that transfer multimedia content from a PC to other consumer electronic devices, such as TVs and games consoles.

As people become more familiar with Wi-Fi and home networking, the PC in the living room is likely to become a reality. While the PC does not have to be physically located in the living room, Microsoft is nonetheless keen to encourage the streaming of digital content from the PC for playback on the TV or the Hi-Fi in the main family room.

26/01/04

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