We Got Served

I am not sure if you could call this last part a “Beginners Guide”.  I am finishing this series up by giving a (very) brief discussion of what I term the Competing Interests to Windows Media Center and how it effects the Average Consumer.  What are these Competing Interests?  Well, I am glad you asked!  I would tend to divide them in the following groups:

• Direct competition
• Trade associations
• Internal Microsoft interests
• Competing technologies

Direct competition

#1 on the list is perhaps the easiest to discuss.  There are several programs and/or services available that want to be your Media Center.

• Cable TV companies
• Satellite TV companies
• TiVo
• Sage TV
• J. River Media Center

This is a very short list of the competition.  Wikipedia has a more complete list of several of the hardware and/or software alternatives to Windows Media Center.  Why do I include cable and satellite companies in this list?  Quite simple.  These companies make a great deal of money renting you/selling you that “must have” DVR.  If Windows Media Center takes the place of that DVR, they stand to lose that revenue.  A recent article that was posted on the WGS site reinforces this possibility.

This could be one of the many reasons that unencrypted and encrypted QAM exists.   If you can record HBO movies onto that your cable providers’ DVR, but nowhere else, that is a decided advantage for them.  I really don’t think they want WMC to become very popular and/or very feature rich.

Then we have the competing hardware/software services.  I have not used any of those services that are available out there, but from what I have read about some of them, the only one that comes close to being a Media Center that fully encompasses the features of WMC is J. River Media Center.  How well does it work?  I would really like to hear from any users out there.

Trade associations

Digital Rights Management, or DRM for short, is a major road block standing in the way of enjoying access to all the digital media that enters your world.  Whether this media comes from your cable company, DVD, or CD.  We have the

• RIAA
• MPAA

both suing everyone in sight who are knowingly, or unknowingly, “sharing” a song they downloaded from the Internet.  To the Average Consumer, these may be the only Trade Organizations they have ever heard of.  They most certainly have got to be the top 2 most hated organizations in recent history.  However, this is not the place to debate DRM.  The consequences of DRM, the RIAA, and the MPAA is probably a major reason why unencrypted and encrypted QAM exists.  Most DVD’s are shipped in an encrypted format.  I really have no idea if CD’s are still encrypted, as I have not bought one in a long time.  Or anyone else…

I really don’t want to get into a debate about all this, as I am not in the least bit qualified to do so.  After all, I am just one of those Average Consumers.

If I do purchase a DVD, or a CD, or a MP3 song, I simply feel (as a consumer) that I should be able to view/listen to that media through any device I have in my home.  So if I copy one of those DVD’s or CD’s to my computer, is that illegal?  To tell you the honest truth, I don’t know.  Perhaps the RIAA and MPAA does not care either, as long as you don’t make it available for download by anyone with an Internet connection.

The one thing I do know that as more features become built into Media Center, the easier it will become to record, and perhaps distribute, media that cuts into the revenue of the original distributors of that media.  While I do feel that most consumers do not want to “steal” anyone’s intellectual property, it is simply far too easy to click on that “Download Now” button.  It is a very fine line between consumers rights and owners rights.  I’m just very happy that I am not a part of any groups responsible for trying to untangle this mess.

Internal Microsoft interests

In the world of Windows Media Center, perhaps WMC’s worst enemy is Microsoft.  They have massive abilities to churn out all sorts of software.  How well they all work together could be the subject for a massive debate.  Perhaps by design in some cases, perhaps by a lack of coordination among the various divisions at Microsoft.  In some cases, it even appears that some of their offering are redundant.  OneCare, for example.  It is basically most of what is included with Vista Defender plus an anti-virus program.  And once again, I really do want WMC on my WHS!

I am quite sure that many of the anti-trust suits they have had to defend themselves from have also changed their business model.  Windows, Office, Server 200x, Visual Studio, are all legacy products that are in continual development and provide a significant amount of revenue to the company.  But if we look at Windows for just a moment, we can find all sorts of little utilities included.  Some are quite nice, some not.

• Paint
• Windows Movie Maker
• Windows Media Center
• Notepad
• The “Live” programs, which are free add-ons to Windows.
• and more.

Could they make them better?  More feature rich?  Sure they could.  Sell them as separate products?  Sure they could.  Will they?  In most cases, no.  Why?  There are limits to the internal resources of a company, for one.  Microsoft wants to sell you an Operating System, not a better Paint program.  Divide the resources and something has to suffer.

And, as I mentioned previously, anything that Microsoft does anymore seems to be scrutinized by just about every software company out there and by many governing bodies.  In some cases, they may very well be justified.  Just look at the cost of Microsoft Office compared to any competitor’s offerings.  In some cases, I get the feeling that many of these companies/government agencies just see a new Microsoft product as another opportunity to line up along the Microsoft money trough.  I really wonder…

One thing I am sure of is that Google better take some lessons on all this, as I’m sure one day, someone will cry “foul” loud enough to get the some government agency involved.  I guess the mentality of “if you can’t build a better mouse trap, sue ‘em” can kill just about any company.  In the U.S., AT&T was the first company that took a fall because they were too big and too powerful.  At least the cable companies are smart enough to have split up their “territories” so as to “seem” like there is competition out there.

Competing technologies

Ah, the competing technologies.  In the world that I grew up in, we had TV.  3 or 4 channels.  Great classic television shows.  The Golden Age of television.  The emergence of the VCR was huge in that it opened up a whole new industry for the purchase and/or rental of theatrical movies. And to record your favorite TV show!

Stereo records.  Singles on 45’s and LPs on 33-1/3’s.  I barely remember 8-tracks, but is was really neat when cassettes came out because you could record that LP to a cassette and play it your car.

Pictures.  Most of the world took their film down to the local camera shop and had them developed on Kodak paper.  A few had those nifty instant Polaroid cameras.

If you look closely, you will notice everything mentioned above was some type of analog format.  Analog is a relatively difficult form to copy.  What the consumer purchased was a copy of the original.  I remember purchasing a Direct-To-Disk LP once.  It was expensive, but the clarity and dynamic range was incredible compared to a “normal” LP.  Every time you make a copy of an analog recording, the quality of that copy suffers.  Quite simply the best kind of copy protection ever invented!

Then we hit the Digital Age.  Or perhaps it hit us.  Records gave way to CD’s.  mp3’s are killing off CD’s.  DVD’s killed VHS tapes. Does anyone even own a film camera anymore?  And then there is the computer. Since the mid 1980’s, slowly but surely, the PC (or MAC) has become as necessary in the home as the TV.  Instead of creating a list here, I will refer you to Wikipedia once again.  Here are examples of the digital audio and video formats available.  These are some of those competing technologies (or formats, if you prefer).

Just reading through those 2 articles makes my head hurt (as an Average Consumer).  And I have not mentioned all the digital image formats out there.  Is there a reason for all those various formats?  Sure there is.  Lossey formats are smaller in size than lossless formats.  People distribute raster images rather than vector images due to size and the increased difficulty in trying to edit a raster image.  But to the average consumer, they could care less as long as they can play that song on their mp3 player or look at that picture in their favorite viewer.

The moral here is that it is a lot more complicated world, now that it is digital.  Incompatibilities between software formats and associated hardware have a tendency to discourage the Average Consumer.  Their question is “What is a codec, and why do I need it?  I just want to play xxxxx!”  Before the digital age, everything was plug-n-play.  Not anymore, which is kind of sad.

And the digital age has become a nightmare, for both industry and the consumer.  If you make a copy of anything digital, the copy is identical to the original.  Industry has fought back with all sorts of strategies.  Copy protection, software activation, proprietary formats, encryption schemes, and others.  I detest all of them as much as anybody else.  Just remember, though, you have no one to blame for it except yourselves.  If we could have simply resisted the temptation to click on that “Download Now” button, we wouldn’t have to to deal with poorly implemented copy protection schemes.

Conclusion

Well, that is about it.  I’m sure that I could have split this last discussion into a few more parts.  Or I could have gone into a lot more detail, but as an Average Consumer, my head is beginning to hurt.  And, you must remember, I am an outsider looking in.  I’m not privy (nor are you) to all the decisions made in various media distribution companies and associations.  I am sure that they are all looking for the best way to protect their property and extract the maximum amount of cash from the consumer.  That is the way it has always been and the way it always will be.  And since I own a few shares of stock here and there, I would like those companies to be profitable, also.

Thanks for reading all this.  I hope you have enjoyed this series.  In this last part, I hope that I have provoked a few questions and thoughts about where we are all headed in this digital age.