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Joystiq: Xbox 360 a Dumb Terminal?

By Alexander Grundner | December 7th, 2005 Interest Level: SMOKING HOT


microsoft xbox 360Uh-oh, it looks like Joystiq’s Vladmir Cole is getting some grief from Microsoft loyalists for pointing out two features that are not available to Xbox 360 users: WMV-HD playback and streaming video when connected to an Windows XP Pro machine (supposedly you can only stream music and photos unless you’re running MCE 2005 — can someone confirm this because I don’t own the Xbox 360 to test this out). Vladmir also gets taken over the coals for publicly stating that “[someone] inside Microsoft is [being] rewarded based on sales of this flavor of the Windows XP operating system [referring to MCE] and that [a] certain someone successfully convinced or forced the Xbox 360 product team to cripple the functionality of the Xbox 360 to limit the threat to his product.”

I would have to agree with that last statement in some respects. Microsoft should have allowed the Xbox 360 to do everything a standard Media Center Extender could do and then some (see XBMC), like DivX and XviD support, UPnP media server support (besides just Windows Media Connect), and definitely WMV-HD playback – it’s their own format for God’s sake. Sure the company wants to push MCE in the limelight, but Windows XP Home and Pro users shouldn’t get the short end of the stick because they didn’t “buy up” or decided to stick with Pro and use a third party PVR application.

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Short URL: http://bit.ly/aLEyjB [+]  Filed in: Streaming Media Devices  
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Alexander Grundner is the Editor & Publisher of eHomeUpgrade. He has been following "Digital Home" developments since 2003. He's also a fan of cross-platform, open development software and industry standards related to media, networking, and the web. You can catch his daily tech musings on Twitter: @agrundner.
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  • jakeludington
    It is in fact correct that streaming video requires Media Center Edition. Windows Media Connect supports video streams but Microsoft hobbled this feature in the implementation for Xbox 360, in theory to promote sales of Media Center SKUs. We can always hope someone will find a hack for this, but so far, it's music and photos only over Windows Media Connect when Xbox 360 is the receiver.




    Jake Ludington


    http://www.jakeludington.com
  • I completely agree that this is a bum deal. A good friend of mine just got a 360, and he was very excited about the extender capabilities. However, he doesn't have MCE... he's only got XP Pro. And as far as I know you're right in assuming that you can't stream with that setup (which is just what this friend was interested in doing). So now he's considering getting MCE soley for this functionality, and not to pleased about it. I too would be in the same boat if I had a 360... I have no desire to spend the money on MCE since I already own both XP pro and XP home.
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