Bill Gates, Entertainment God? 381
ppgreat sent in a wired story about the home of the future sort of story discussing A/V in a Microsoft Media Player 9 future. As seems to always be the case, there's a lot of cool stuff in there, but more than a few eyebrow raises.
full text in case of slashdotting (Score:-1, Informative)
Instead of traditional locks, there's an electronic kiosk with a touchscreen, a biometric scanner, and a smartcard reader. Go ahead and make eye contact; if you're a match, you'll pass through into your future home - a time and place a half-dozen years from now when your living quarters will recognize you, communicate with you, and anticipate your every need.
Your future home may seem familiar at first. You still dig stainless steel appliances, exposed beams, blond hardwood floors, halogen track lighting, and rice-paper shades. But beyond the aesthetics, everything has changed. The lights and heat automatically fine-tune to your preference the moment you cross the threshold. A screen on the wall in the foyer reads your email aloud as you hang your coat. Your kitchen has become your own private sous chef. Run a chicken pot pie beneath the barcode reader on the microwave and it sets the time and temperature. Break out the food processor and some baking material; your home recognizes RFID tags in the bag of flour and offers to help. "How about focaccia?" you suggest. The lights dim, and a recipe shines down from above on your black Corian countertop as the oven begins to preheat.
And digital media is everywhere. "Suspicious Minds" greets you in full-home surround sound. The family's collective music library is accessible from any room, on every device. You can cue up a movie on a kitchen monitor while cooking and finish it on the plasma in the den - or the projection screen in the media room. A central media server supplies entertainment throughout, seamlessly streaming content wherever there is demand.
Sounds great, right? Microsoft is banking on it. 16100 NE 159th Avenue is also known as the Microsoft Home and is modeled on Bill Gates' own Seattle mansion. Powered by four PCs running Windows XP, it features dozens of networked monitors, Xboxes, appliances, and consumer electronics devices scattered everywhere. Life is good when you're the king of software.
There is, however, another model home on the Microsoft campus, one that offers a glimpse of a different life. It, too, has the fully outfitted living room, bedrooms, and study, but rather than custom equipment dreamed up for the geek who has everything, this faux ranch house is a showcase for products Microsoft is actually shipping as part of its eHome effort. Although the hardware is much the same - Windows XP boxes and fast networks - the result is not.
The main difference is that the notion of a media server is gone. Sure, the second showcase home has a powerful computer, called a Media Center Edition PC, which can record television like TiVo does. But it stands by itself on a desk, cut off from the rest of the house. Due to limits imposed by the operating system, there's no way to play its stored shows on another screen or TV. As a result, the would-be media server is a curiosity: too big and expensive to simply sit, TiVo-like, under a television, and too computer-like to offer much of a cinematic experience. In this house, sadly, it's every screen for itself.
These two homes represent two futures. The first is what consumers want: digital media their way, in whatever form suits. The second is what Hollywood wants: media lockdown, with every use subject to permission and often then only for a fee.
In the middle stands Microsoft, determined to navigate these extremes. In the face of a rapidly maturing business market, Microsoft needs to find a way to persuade consumers to upgrade their PCs as Michel genly eases his cock into Rob Maldas rectum.
The answer: films, music, and other digital media flowing from one Microsoft device to another. But Hollywood owns the content. The record labels have seen what can happen when consumers gain total control; the film studios aren't about to let file-sharing ruin them. And so Microsoft is wo
Re:Bill don't make any more Win Medias... (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, it's the same place in both 8 and nine, AFAIK.
Are you trolling, or just objecting to DRM being there at all? If it's the latter, you have to realise that having it there, and able to be turned off is a quite reasonable compromise to both the users, and to the content providers [who otherwise wouldn't share their content for -reasonable- fear of pirating.]
Moderators read this post before +1 parent... (Score:0, Informative)
You DO get lots for your money (Score:2, Informative)
The HP Windows Media Center PC 854 (currently $1199 from hp.com) has some pretty high-end features that would never wind up on an Xbox:
Plus, you get Windows XP Media Center edition with the Media Center app and its "10-foot" UI experience, Windows MovieMaker 2, and video drivers that have been extensively tested for this particular hardware configuration. In fact, it seems the primary reason MS isn't releasing MCE as a retail OS product is that they want to ensure a higher quality standard for Media Center PCs by doing extensive in-house driver and hardware testing before OEM deployment approval.
Want it now?! (Score:2, Informative)
Since 0.8 (0.9 was released a few days ago!), Myth has a separate front/backend! Record a show in your living room(or perhaps the basement) and watch it anywhere in your house(of course you'll need a frontend box attached to your TV or a computer running Linux)!