Windows Media Center is a largely untapped resource sitting on your MCE 2005 or Vista computer. Maybe not yours, because you are reading this right now. If you are perusing We Got Served, you are most likely perusing one of your favorite Media Center sites, also. But what of the average consumer? Does the average consumer have a clue what MC is, how to use it, or maximize the features included in MC? Does the average consumer know about extenders and the ability to stream data to other viewing devices in the home? Or how to do it? For the average consumer, the answer is mostly likely no.
Ian Dixon over the TheDigitalLifestyle seems to have the inside scoop on just about anything Media Center related. The latest Ian Dixon blog caught my eye today.
A comment by Alexander got me thinking about Windows Media Center and the consumer:
Unless you show a product/feature in action and how it relates to customers’ lives, mainstream adoption will continue to allude Microsoft. Inevitably when someone comes around to our house for the first time, they are amazed by what MC is and what it can do. The second time they come around they ask questions and want to play with it themselves. The third time ends up being a Q&A session of what to buy, etc. And from then on I’m treated as MC tech support. If I can convert so many of my friends, why can’t Microsoft? What’s even funnier that over the course of my friends’ transformation, the perception of Vista also changes for the better (in fact I only purchased Vista in preparation of the extenders).
If Microsoft wants to digitally “connect” our homes, they need to start promoting Media Center in a big way, and they need to develop a better cost effective plug-and-play solution. It is one thing to be able to use Media Center on one’s computer. It is quite another thing to seamlessly “connect” an entire home using this software.
I will be the first to admit that I am a MC newbie. As I stated in a previous post, I started using Media Center only after getting the desire to convert some VHS tapes to a digital format. In itself, this conversion process was quite a learning experience in regards to figuring out:
· Hardware requirements
· Recording software
· Editing software, including the final digital format to save the videos in.
· And, of course, the “What do I do with it now?” question.
I do consider myself a techie, so it is always a fun challenge to learn how to do something new on the computer. My wife, whom I love dearly, is about as opposite as one can get. The plug it in, turn it on, use it mentality. She is member of that nebulous segment of society called the Average Consumer. If it doesn’t work right away, her frustration factor ramps up quite quickly, and any favorable opinion of the product dissipates rapidly. I was actually shocked and amazed when she wanted to invest in a HTIAB system. It was a very nice improvement in our viewing/listening experience. Of course, she sets it to the 5 channel stereo mode. Go figure. In my sphere of influence, I get the distinct impression that she is in the majority (Average Consumer) and I am in the minority. Oh well, story of my life…
Microsoft produces computer software. And some computer hardware. Note the word computer. Even though Microsoft has now started selling consumer items such as mp3 players and game consoles, Microsoft is still a “computer” company. It is interesting to note that their “consumer” game console includes that extender technology to bridge the computer world and the consumer world. In my opinion, it is a vastly underused feature of the XBox console. In order for Microsoft to effectively promote itself as a consumer oriented company (read: not computer) and expand the use of Media Center to the rest of the home, they have to come up with complete package to do this.
And educate Joe Average on why it is a “must” for his home.
What do you think?
This is Part 1 in a series of blogs on this topic. Part 2: The Total Microsoft Package. Stay tuned…
July 16th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
I’ve argued this exact point in another thread here in regards to the Home Server. In my eyes, the biggest shortfall in the Home Server is the simple lack of extenders for Media Hubs like the Xbox 360. I’m a techie, but my wife is not. She would never use the 360 as a place to play here music if she was forced to use the blades and media share interface that comes with that. But she couldn’t love the Media Center interface via her laptop on the 360 more. When we eneded up with multiple libraries on multiple machines, it created a new problem for us because she loved the MC interface. I thought I had the problem solved with the purchase of a WHS, only to find out that I still needed to run a third machine (her laptop) and the sharing between the two was not seemless (nor could it be any less energy saving in my eyes). It pains me that Microsoft is so close, but just far enough away that I cannot, in good faith, recommend the WHS or the Media Center to my nontechie friends because they don’t have the same patience that I do, nor the same understanding of technology. I’m looking forward to the rest of this discussion.
July 18th, 2008 at 9:13 am
I have a similar experience with Vista Media Center. When I show my family and friends our setup they are all impressed and thinks it’s really smart to have all video, TV and music stored on one box connected to the TV. Personally I can not enjoy my media with a noisy PC, so I purchased a dedicated VMC PC that is passively cooled, it’s very close to silent, only tiny sound comes from the hard drives.
Unfortunately VMC does not work out of the box. I’ve had to go through endless setups to get everything to work. Most problematic is the music section. I have High Resolution coverart and it’s taken me a year to organize my 1500 albums and tweak VMC to show the HiRes artwork.
Another area where the Music falls short is discovering new/remove tracks, simply does not work with my collection.
The auto playlist are also total nonsens on my machine.
MediaCenter is also unstable so every now and then I will have to make a hard reboot as it just hangs with a black screen and refuse to take any inputs from keyboard of mouse.
The guide data is at times unreliable and getting MS to contact the supplier is a long process. Took them 4-5 months to correct the Daily Show.
Pictures section doesn’t really work as it pulls up all pictures from my 1500 albums. Would be nice if there was a way to create slide shows with matching music and save the show.
Podcast and netradio is also missing from VMC. Netradio I’ve been able to get working with Webmedia plugin.
Subtitles have been missing from the DVB-T signal which is a big deal for some relatives but that should be fixed soon if Fiji is released to the masses.
Then there is teh VMC menu’s. I wonder how many users are actually using the following under Music: Burn to CD, Buy Music, Random. I never use these options and would like to get rid of them.
All in all I really love my VMC and I’m not aware of any other solution that will look as nice and cover so many areas of media.
But I can not recommend my less tech savy friends to use VMC. It’s just not there yet as they are not willing to spend a year tweaking they setup and live with the SW Crash.
I think VMC is very much like “pizza time” described in the WapIt story. Currently “no one” knows about VMC and what it offers. And it doesn’t work well. The concept is not mature, understood and adopted.
Give VMC another 10 years and unless some other company comes along and offer a better experience my guess is that we will see VMC in TVs and on all computers … and you wont even thing about VMC as VMC. It will become a normal way of life. Like sending an email is today - no biggie - but remember that in 1994 it was really really fancy and not everybody had an email account.
So what’s the way ahead? MS has to make VMC stable and fix the obvious shortcomings in Music, Pictures, Videos and TV section. Build feedback from users of guide data to the providers so that errors can be fixed fast.
MS could also go the xbox router and build the VMC hardware. I’m dreaming of silent PCs with perfect components for VMC that works perfectly with sleep/hibernation and just runs and runs and runs without re-boots.