Since I’ll be on vacation next week and won’t be a part of the show, I really wanted to be here this week. Unfortunately, refinishing hard wood floors means that other things had to take priority. The best for you, the listener, is that my space is filled by Craig Scholle, a previous guest of the show. Craig and Josh roll through the week’s news and other topics you’ll enjoy. Between the impending rollout of Hulu Plus and discussing the future of Media Center, it’s an entertaining show to say the least. Enjoy!
Click here to down Episode 84!
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Good show. It is reactionary to say MCE is dead. But what is true is that we are now seeing the beginning of a wave of multiple development platforms, some of which may gain the momentum to displace the rather uninspiring evolution from XpMCE to Win7MCE in the livingroom. Xbox360, GoogleTV, Popbox, Boxee, WDTV HD Live Plus, Apple TV, Sling, Tivo, Roku, set-top boxes…. are all planning to offer options that will, from separate directions, to displace parts of what MCE offers in the living-room.
MCE is still too hard. Most people do not want to get a HDMI video card and blu-ray drive to ensure they have an HDCP compliant chain to play blu-ray on their TV. Getting Win7 installed just to play all codecs and view subtitles, to record TV, to learn the things that an extender can and cannot do, building a quiet HTPC and getting a useful remote control are all significant barriers to entry. I do these things but most people will not.
By now the big PC players who have tried to make mass-market solutions based on MCE have since all deserted that space (HP and Sony, principally). No one else has the wherewithal to bring the type of one-stop ease of use to get MCE to mass acceptance. Without that mass acceptance, MCE simply will not have development momentum. To be fair, none of the other platforms are aiming to be as full-featured as MCE but all of them will aim to be easier.
Let's just admit that standalone extenders are a dead-end. Sure, the extender still does its thing if you have one. But its development is dead. The newer quieter XBox360 is the future.
However, as a PC-based solution, Microsoft will make sure that MCE continues to share in new and compelling features (cablecard is a unique one for US users) – we know this because Microsoft is simply NOT giving up on the desktop. It's a good thing that MCE is now a standard part of Windows. Sure, development is slow and, unfortunately, MCE hasn't inspired massive third-party development (even the better third party plug-ins are still virtually all personal pet projects). But MCE development isn't going to be left behind either. Win8 will have its share of new features and I look forward to those but MCE is not where most people will get their living-room experience.
So where does that leave us? MCE is still the best technology for those who want to invest the time. Its UI, graphics, expandability, options, customization, build-your-own.. and many other features are all unparalleled. and MCE embedded could solve the ease of use part of the equation once in a TV or set-top box.
But shouldn't we expect that MCE will soon be in the same space as XP Tablet? Both had a huge head start in terms of technology and vision but the market never bought into them. XP Tablet will never be the iPad – that opportunity is gone. Still, Win7 has multi-touch support and is itself actually quite a good UI. Win7 also has MCE and it's also very good but MCE is not going to outgrow even the XBox360 in the livingroom. We know by now that MCE is not the game-changer. So once there is an equivalent of the iPad-revolution for the TV-mediacenter space – isn't that going to relegate MCE to same place as XPTablet?