Revisting Tim Coyle’s ‘I Was Right: Xbox 360 Will Kill Media Center’ Statement
By Alexander Grundner |
February 13th, 2006
Comments (3)
Not too long ago, Tim Coyle added a semi-controversial post entitled, “I Was Right: Xbox 360 Will Kill Media Center.” At that time we all finally agreed that Windows Media Center Edition (MCE) is a key component in Microsoft’s Digital Home vision and would never entirely be replaced by an Xbox. But, I always felt that the sub-$600 Xbox 360 would definitely damage set-top MCE sales due to the fact that it can stream music, photos, and video from an MCE server, as well as, stream live TV, program the server’s DVR, and even play HD-DVDs once Microsoft releases the external drive. So basically, why would you need a full-blown PC in every room with a TV when you’ve got 90%+ of MCE’s functionality on your new next-gen game console, right?
Now to drive home the point further (and really close the sale on my argument), Steve Makofsky, a Software Design Engineer in the Platforms Incubation group at Microsoft, asks on his blog: “MCE into the Closet?” Below is his recent post on the subject:
Now that I’ve hooked up the 360 into the theater room, I’ve been really thinking about just shoving the Media Center that used to drive the theater into the closet and essentially turn it into a Media Center Server. Liz needs an instruction sheet to use the old setup (poor wife acceptability factor on MCE), and I’m primarily using it as a network DVD changer. We rarely watch TV on it.
I’d really like to start to eliminate all these computers around the house and get back to having a server, a laptop or two and a few “exploded pc” devices around the house.
The way I see it is, if you’re going to make your MCE PC the server/hub of your digital home entertainment, you better make sure you have a top of the line PC with all the latest bells and whistles. Reason being, once you crossed the 3 networked Xbox 360 threshold, your server MCE PC is going to face some serious computing/memory/storage resource issues when all three are trying to access its content/services at the same time. However, if you think that each of your Xbox units will only be accessing the MCE server on a limited basis or you won’t be using the live TV streaming function, then you’re golden with an off-the-shelf MCE PC.
Note: Accessing live TV is the trickiest part of this setup. You’re more likely going to have a better TV viewing experience by using your cable/satellite providers set-top and using the Xbox 360 for everything else, though it is possible to stream live and recorded TV from your MCE server, as previously mentioned. Tip: If you go this route, pick a up a Harmony 360 Remote to make your life easier.
February 13th, 2006 at 9:11 am
Having recently gotten ahold of an Xbox 360 and used the MCE extender functionality, I can see this already happening in my own home. My wife is cool with MCE (we store lots of kids videos on it - very convenient), but we only have access to the videos downstairs on the HDTV set, where the 360 is also connected. If I could stream that content from upstairs (where the router is at), then I could use the 360 downstairs for my TV and video watching while using the MCE PC upstairs. Then, I have two places to view content so that my kids can watch their videos while I’m playing Call of Duty 2. I’d love to eventually have the MCE PC act purely as a server as well.
February 13th, 2006 at 9:28 am
I can see your point, I don’t use the PC in Media Center mode half as much as I did since I got my XBOX 360.
Rather than killing Media Center I think it would drive sales of Media Center PC running as family PC’s and Media Center Servers.
So you couldn’t get away from having a Media Center PC but I can see that the actual PC will be used more as a server
I guess its the combination of one main Media Center PC and lots of extender devices is where its going
I agree with David, I get my PC running recorded TV for the kids while I play PGR3 on the xbox
February 14th, 2006 at 4:53 pm
imho if Microsoft wants the Xbox 360 to succeed as a Media Center Extender they need to let it do all the tricks a set-top Media Center can do; 3rd party codec support, DVD (HD DVD, Bluray) access via the network and DVD changer support to name but a few. otherwise the extender (in this case the Xbox 360) will always deliver an inferior experience with regards to the set-top version, which fragments the overall user experience.