So there I was at DigitalLife, attending Microsoft"s Friday AfterLife party. Everyone assumed the event was about Windows Media Center 2005, so we were all awaiting some kind of announcement. But instead, they just kept serving up drinks and stylishly clad guests -- something that always makes us journalists huddle together in cliques for self-protection.
Turns out AfterLife wasn"t a platform for a WMC announcement at all. Microsoft did make one on Friday, but it chose New Zealand as its venue. Yeah, because New Zealand is where I can easily go for a front-row seat. I was miffed about that for a little while, but then forgot about it as I started trading shots with a marketing flak. She won, of course.
The next day was filled with platform announcements concerning hardware vendors eager to support WMC 2005 once it comes out. Companies like Alienware, Gateway, HP, and Toshiba, to name a few. Anything this popular deserved more attention, so I made calls to Redmond and got some dish on this latest entertainment platform.
TiVo, watch out! Windows Media Center 2005 is aimed squarely at TiVo"s feature set -- with some additional goodies. Do the whole fast forward, rewind, and record of live TV, whether it"s over the air or cable-based. This includes Movie Finder, Program Guide, and Guide Search features, all with no service fee.
Next, the same interface will play music and videos -- from MP3 players, digital still cameras, and full-motion video cameras. Basically, whatever can connect to a PC for an image dump, WMC 2005 can show. And not only show, but provide a keen menu-style interface for easy searching and navigation.
And finally, there"s output. WMC2005 can dump to a central home disk store -- like the home NAS platforms now being offered by Buffalo or Netgear -- using Ethernet or Wi-Fi. The same hooks or USB also allow dumping content to a portable media viewer, smartphone, PDA, or the like. You can even burn straight to CD or DVD using menu-based tools included in the OS.
Easy peesy.
Additional goodies include support for a full-function remote control (though this isn"t really new), as well as support for My Radio, which allows access to Internet or FM radio services.
Downsides: You"re buying a computer with all the costs associated with such a purchase. Similar devices (like, say, TiVo) are a fraction of that price. Products such as HP"s z557 Media Center PC cost just more than US$2,000 sans display. Compare that with an 80-hour TiVo box for only $300 (street). And TiVo has also just increased its feature set a mite, offering much easier integration between multiple TiVo devices in the home as well as an out-to-PC feature that lets you dump content to an Ethernet-connected PC hard disk.
The next problem is foggier, namely DRM (digital rights management). Even though the new rollup update has been announced, Redmond isn"t talking much about how exactly DRM will affect us content-grabbers. What"s for sure is that much of the new content coming down the pike will be tightly controlled, both in terms of access and in terms of distribution. Distribution meaning how many times you can record or burn a particular piece of commercial content -- or whether you can do so at all. More on this once WMC 2005 with its rollup has wandered around the real-world block a few times.
If I had any other nitpicks, they might include the lack of support for XM radio in addition to Internet and FM (though I think there are some XM-Internet hacks out there, so I think you can get around that one if you work at it.)
Nitpicks aside, it"s a pretty cool and highly targeted OS. Compare a $2,000 HP WMC with a $300 TiVo, though, and I know what I"m buying. But include it on a $600 Mac mini clone or Shuttle PC and the choice is suddenly a lot harder. We"ll see such product announcements before the 2005 holiday shopping season, so I"d give it a few weeks before buying anything. Meantime, if anyone has any real-world dish on DRM"s effects on WMC, please let me in on them by e-mailing oliver_rist@infoworld.com.