Charlie asks Can Windows Media Center go beyond the enthusiast market?

Charlie Owen (@charlieo) from Microsoft and frequent blogger posts this question to all of twitter, if Media Center can go beyond the enthusiast market. Personally, I still think there’s a chance, but I’m a die hard optimist. What concerns me most is the lack of innovation–as Charlie points out, when Media Center first came out, it was so unique and did so many things great. I just haven’t seen the same earth-shattering features come out since then. The saddest part is that had the rumored DirecTV and Dish integrated tuners could possibly have seriously changed all this. Only time will tell, I’m not of the boat that thinks Microsoft will remove Media Center any time soon. What say you MissingRemote crowd?

Charlie Owen

To remain relevant (and become mainstream) in a market where the internet will increasingly be the dominant way of getting nearly all forms of commercial content the Windows Media Center team must fully embrace the internet rather than simply leveraging. Over the course of Windows 7 development the equivalent of three people (one each PM, Dev, Test) on the platform team tried to do just that with the Data Access Model Items, Media Collection and Page Model, Navigation and State API work. Another relatively small team continued to crank out the Internet TV features for customers in the United States. By comparison a significant number of resources continued to work on the traditional TV pipes paradigm (broadcast, cable, satellite) for Windows 7. In a nutshell, very little embracing.

 

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