“All will be revealed at BUILD” is the phrase we keep hearing from Microsoft about Windows 8. BUILD is the name of their development conference set to be held September 13th-16th in Anaheim. Until all is actually revealed we don’t have a lot of information to work from when trying to figure out the future of many of Windows’ features, but I think that Microsoft may have already provided us with enough juicy tidbits to form a decent idea of how we might be using the next version of Windows for accessing our media.
Will Windows Media Center Survive?
Here at the Digital Media Zone we love Windows Media Center. In fact, all of our contributors use it as the primary interface for accessing all of our media from the living room. Many have been wondering for months whether Windows Media Center will be included with Windows 8. It is my belief that Media Center will be available in Windows 8. Microsoft doesn’t typically get rid of features that people actually use. They don’t always significantly update applications, like in the case of Notepad, but they don’t normally kill them off entirely either.
All that being said, it is now my thought that Windows Media Center won’t actually be included with Windows 8, but I also don’t think it will be dead. How can that be? Microsoft has made it clear that Windows 8 will have its own app store. Adam Thursby speculates, and I agree with him, that Microsoft will make Windows Media Center an app that can be downloaded (most likely, for free) from the Windows 8 app store. I actually think Microsoft may move a lot of their apps to the app store. For example, it would make a lot of sense to put popular offerings such as Live Movie Maker, Live Messenger, and Live Writer into the app store.
Why the App Store?
So why would they move these applications, as popular as they may be, to an app store? They would do it to make the base installation of Windows 8 as small as possible. Some might think that is a pointless endeavor, especially with how cheap and large hard drives are now, but I think there is a very good reason: mobility. It appears as if Microsoft may actually be moving towards a single operating system across their three main hardware targets: desktops, tablets, and phones. If Microsoft can get the core operating system down to just a few gigabytes then they wouldn’t have any trouble at all squeezing it onto a tiny drive found within a tablet or mobile phone. With the new user interface Microsoft showed off earlier this summer it looks as though putting the same operating system that is on your desktop, onto your mobile device, may actually work this time around. Combine that with Microsoft’s efforts to make Windows run on ARM processors and I think there’s a very good possibility of this strategy working. There is one other benefit to putting as many of their own applications into an app store. They could potentially avoid the ridiculous anti-trust suits they’ve had to go through in previous years because the apps would no longer be bundled with the operating system. That idea came from a conversation I had with @databasejase.
Windows 8 as a Home Theater PC
While I still think Windows Media Center will be available for Windows 8, I think Microsoft may actually have another, even better, idea for accessing our media. Windows 8’s default start screen user interface (UI) is going to be tile-based, just like Windows Phone 7. Microsoft has already proven that the tile-based UI works really well on mobile devices, and anything with a touch screen, but what about your television? If you consider what the tiles actually represent it’s not hard to imagine that it would be quite simple to navigate with a remote control too. At its core, the tiles are really just a grid of beautiful icons. I’m sure Microsoft hates hearing people say that because their Live Tile concept does provide for more than just icons, but at the end of the day when you select one it launches an application. In the Windows 8 preview video Microsoft showed off Live Tiles for videos, music, and photos, and in demonstrations of the new Xbox dashboard we’ve seen live tiles for Live TV. Right there you have all of the core features of a home theater PC available in a gorgeous UI that is easily controlled by a remote control!
Of course the start screen that was shown in the Windows 8 preview wasn’t ideally laid out for an HTPC, but it will definitely be customizable. We can assume you’ll have the ability to place the tiles anywhere you want. There is another GIGANTIC advantage to using this tile-based user interface on a home theater PC over Windows Media Center: apps! One of the biggest complaints over the years from the most ardent Windows Media Center users has been the lack of plugins. Windows 8’s Live Tiles development will simply be done with HTML 5, CSS3, and JavaScript. That opens up the doors to millions of developers who didn’t want to get bogged down in trying to learn Media Center Markup Language. The entire development story hasn’t been fleshed out, but that’s really the whole point of the BUILD conference.
Conclusion
Even if Windows Media Center isn’t included in Windows 8, I still believe that Windows 8 will offer a fantastic user experience as the basis of a home theater PC. A beautiful, simple, and familiar user interface paired with apps that should be plentiful due to an easier development model could combine for the best living room media experience we’ve ever encountered!
I sincerely hope you’re right, Josh. I think something will be available…whether it will be Media Center as we know it, or an all-in-one Media Center/Media Player/Zune replacement that pulls in the best features from all three, remains to be seen. And I’m in full agreement that it shouldn’t be bundled into the core OS. Moving niche functionality like this to an app store makes perfect sense. Great post.
I don’t think there will be a Media Centre… But if you look at the new XBOX interface they have tabs like “home” “social” etc. Wouldn’t be too hard to make a Media tab where all of the WMC functions are in their own apps (preferably with the option of hiding unused apps/installing only the apps you need, because I’ll never be using Live TV). Just make sure it links to the XBOX.