September 18th, 2008
TV Pack headaches reveal Microsoft's Media Center dilemma
Of all the features included with Windows Vista, Media Center is unique. The Media Center application is built into the Home Premium and Ultimate editions of Vista, which means it’s on at least three out of every four PCs sold at retail today. Its predecessor, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, was the default installation for most consumer PCs for more than two years as well. Together, that means Media Center is installed on as many as 200 million PCs worldwide.
But the Media Center feature set runs deep, offering high-end capabilities that appeal strongly to digital media enthusiasts. That enthusiasm has inspired some passionate communities, the largest of which is The Green Button, a community site with more than 112,000 registered members. (The Green Button was recently acquired by Microsoft, but its management and independent character have remained unchanged.) Down Under, the Australian Media Center Community boasts more than 11,000 members, and other large Media Center communities exist in Europe and Asia.
With all those passionate users, you’d think that a trip to The Green Button and other community sites would be a Media Center lovefest. Guess again. These days, the community is spending much of its energy complaining, loudly, that Microsoft is ignoring its wishes and moving too slowly with Media Center development. The volume kicked up to 11 after Microsoft announced the release to manufacturing of its Windows Media Center TV Pack (formerly code-named “Fiji”) and acknowledged that it would be officially available only on new systems sold through OEMs.
I’ve been digging into that story for the past month or so, including some hands-on tests of the TV Pack running in Windows Vista. In the gallery that accompanies this post, I have an in-depth look at the TV Pack in operation. In this post, I want to focus on the disconnect between the Media Center development team and its community.
What we have here, according to the most vocal critics in the Media Center community, is a failure. What we really have here, I think, is a failure to communicate.
The controversy over the TV Pack release highlights the age-old conflict between the needs of a mass market and those of an enthusiast community.
- Media Center enthusiasts want frequent releases and esoteric features and are willing to sacrifice some stability and usability to be on the bleeding edge.
- Microsoft wants to create a platform for as many customers as possible, with their primary goals being predictability, stability, and simplicity. Enthusiasts write the reviews, but OEMs write the big checks.
When you’re building a software platform that reaches millions of people worldwide, you have a powerful incentive to move slowly and make changes with great care. Enthusiasts want a new release every month and will tolerate endless tweaks and troubleshooting; the platform builder is thinking over a much longer term. OEMs want to know that the hardware they design will work for a long, profitable life cycle and don’t want to find out that a seemingly innocuous update broke their most popular configuration and cost them a small fortune in support calls. Back in December 2006, Media Center Program Manager Charlie Owen put that expectation into concrete terms when he wrote:
Of course, we are still very early in the lifetime of this platform — at the time of this writing, just over a year since it’s been commercially available to consumers. Stick with the platform for 10-15 more years and let’s see what happens to this request over time.
Whoa, did he say 10-15 years? That’s a long-term commitment…
For what it’s worth, I’m indisputably a Media Center enthusiast, but I’m firmly in the “stable long-term platform” camp. It’s been frustrating to wait years for features such as digital cable support and HD-compatible extenders to arrive, but the stable, high-performing system I have today tells me the wait was worth it.
So, what is the TV Pack? Why are Media Center fanatics so worked up over it? Is it something the Windows installed base will notice or want? And will the controversy over the TV Pack’s release blow over? Those are some of the questions I answer in this post.
What is TV Pack, and who can get it? –>
Ed Bott is an award-winning technology writer with more than two decades' experience writing for mainstream media outlets and online publications. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 09/19/08
