Entertainment 2.0

Media Center users are used to it.  Having media that doesn’t go from one system to another is just something you learn to deal with when it comes to using not only Media Center but other MS products as well.  I think myself, as well as a majority of MS product users think that this practice, over many others, needs to be reconciled. 

The fact is that Microsoft should want the Zune and Zune software to fit into the rest of the entertainment ecosystem, to include Windows Media Player and Media Center.  Let me give you an example of what happens now:

1. I download a playlist using my Zune Pass.
2. Said playlist is uploaded to my Zune and I can take it anywhere.
3. Music that makes up this playlist are available in WMP and Media Center
4. Playlist is not.  It has to be manually generated=not fun!

This is what I currently go through in order to use playlists the way I want.  It’s a time consuming and, quite honestly, boring process.  Zune playlists are in the .zpl format while WMP and MCE playlists are .wpl.  Why they’re not both the same is beyond me.  Does MS honestly believe that I want to listen to a completely different playlist in my car versus my home?  Usually these things are created so that you can use them anywhere!

Look, I’m not here to complain.  I’m here to offer solutions!  I’m the answer man!  And besides, I love my Zune, I love my Media Center and I just want them to play nice together.  That being said, here is what I think needs to be done to fix this situation:

1. Either make a universal playlist filetype that will play anywhere within the MS entertainment ecosystem to include Zune, Zune software, WMP, Media Center and Windows Mobile, or make these systems read all playlist files.
2. I love the Zune software.  It’s certainly a lot smoother than iTunes.  Keep the software but create plugins for WMP and Media Center, tied to my Zune Pass which will allow me to buy and use content from inside those systems.
3. Currently, when I sync my Zune, the software knows where I paused the last podcast I was listening to and will start playing from there.  Make this happen in Media Center.  You have no idea how much time I spend fast forwarding through podcasts in MCE to get to where I was in the car.  I don’t want to listen to the same thing twice.

The next question people ask is: “Why would MS listen to a bunch of hobbyists about their products?”  Well that’s easy to answer.  Because we’re the ones beating our heads against this wall trying to tie it all together.  And let’s face it, if MS wants the Zune to compete with the iPod (something it has yet to do) then being able to offer people a system in which they can play their content anywhere without buying anything extra is a great pitch!  You don’t have to buy speakers, you don’t need to buy a special set-top box, nothing.  Just the PC you already own and the Zune you just bought.  Hell, if you’re willing to pay for the subscription without the actual hardware, you could use this service just in your home!  You can do that now, but really, the playlists still won’t do you any good except in the software and there’s no way to resume your podcasts.

To be honest, I don’t think this is a Microsoft product problem.  I think this is a Microsoft marketing problem.  If the marketing team thought the way actual users do, then this would already have been done.  They could have gone to the software programmers and told them to make it all work together because it would make more money.  Same goes for Media Center.  The product is one of the best that MS has ever produced, especially in Win 7.  It’s not the eHome team that needs to be chastised here, it’s the marketing team.  If MS’s entertainment products aren’t used to their greatest potential, that’s where we need to look for reasons.

I’m not sure what Gizmodo was doing wrong when they recently connected an Xbox 360 to use as a Media Center extender, but whoever was in charge must not have gotten much sleep the night before.

If you head over and read the article, the first thing you’ll notice is that they decided it would be a good idea to use a wi-fi connection.  While this is, of course, possible, by spending some time reading The Green Button, The Digital Lifestyle, or a myriad of other sites, you’ll quickly find out that wired is the best way to set up a media network in your home.  Yeah, sure, you can slap that wireless adapter on to the back of your 360, but be prepared to have issues.  This was true with Vista, as I’ve seen first hand, so it’s probably not going to be much different with Windows 7.  I don’t currently have a wireless adapter in my house so if anyone is using an Xbox 360 this way please comment and let me know your experiences With Windows 7.

The other thing that caught my eye was how it was stated: “And though it’s still rough around the edges, it mostly functions.”  I wouldn’t be running 7MC in my home if it “mostly functioned”.  Sorry, but WAF is wayyy more important to me.

I have other problems with the review, but another one that stood out was this quote from the post:

In theory, you should be able to start Media Center on the Xbox it will already have a prompt to initiate the setup process (If you already have another MC computer up and running, you can go into the Computer menu under System Settings) In theory, it should offer an eight digit number, which you then plug into the setup screen on the desktop Media Center client, and the rest is taken care of.

This worked the first time, but because the UI on the Xbox media center was painstakingly laggy, I attempted to unlink the Xbox and PC, and try the setup again. A handful of failed configurations took place, and I ultimately had to make sure no trace of previous MC setup attempts were present on either the Xbox or the PC, then clear the Xbox Cache.

I have a few problems with this.  Again, I don’t know what their test area looks like, but even with wireless, I’ve never seen an Xbox 360 not connect on the first shot nor be so laggy in the UI that it was unusable.  Not only that, but the phrase “in theory” being used is misleading to those who may be trying this for the first time.  It doesn’t happen “in theory”.  It just happens.  When you attempt to enter the Media Center UI from the 360 the first time, it will give you steps needed to do the setup.  Follow the instructions and you’ll be done in just a few minutes.

The last part of the post states:

The only problem is that video seems to be finicky. Windows friendly formats, such as WMV, seem to work best, while AVI files tend to have problems. The Media Center team at Microsoft says that the beta version of Media Center isn’t handling third party video formats particularly well, especially DivX and Xvid, but they expect to work the kinks out on that soon. Wilson has been able to get a couple of AVI files streaming properly using the above steps, but Jason and I have not, and the video folder registering as empty.

While I have no doubt that the author spoke to someone at MS, I do doubt the statement about Divx and Xvid files being “finicky”.  Other than one file type (which was several years old) every AVI file I’ve tossed at the 360 has played flawlessly.  I’m curious as to what file types the testers were using to get these results.

The only other thing I’ll mention is that at no point in the article does anyone mention that Windows 7 is a beta.  This is something that needs to be mentioned as a way to let people new to Media Center, and HTPC in general know that yes, there may be bugs.  As well,  I’ve been using 7MC in my home for over two weeks now and have yet to have a major problem.  The only issue (which has been documented by more people than just myself) is that you can get network issues while streaming live HDTV to an Xbox 360.  I, and others have filed this report to MS.

I have no doubt that Adrian Covert knows what he’s doing when it comes to tech.  I’m sure he’s written many great articles that have been a lot of help to people.  I just think that the ball was dropped on this occasion.  If you’re thinking of using Media Center in Windows 7 or buying an Xbox 360 to use as an extender, spend some time at TGB or TDL to find out how things actually work.

Can anyone tell me what the following list of items have in common:

TV SERVICES (some movie/video also):

• ABC
• Hulu
• CBS
• Comedy Central
• CNN
• The WB
• MySpaceTV
• BBC iPlayer for UK users

MOVIE/VIDEO SERVICES:

• Netflix
• Joost
• YouTube
• Apple Movie Trailers
• CNet
• Revision3

MUSIC SERVICES:

• MTV Music
• Last.fm

PHOTO SHARING SERVICES:

• Flickr
• Picasa
• Boston Globe’s "The Big Picture"

(List courtesy of Brent Evans’ GeekTonic.)

If you said “Oh, I know that!  Those are the services available on Boxee!  The open-source HTPC software!  That’s easy!”  then you’d be right.  If you said “Those are all the services not available inside my Media Center…” you’d be right as well.

I can’t figure it out.  Microsoft is a software giant.  Whether you love or hate them, they put a PC in a lot of homes around the world with DOS and then Windows.  They’ve pioneered technology.  This isn’t some startup out of a garage anymore.  It’s a multinational juggernaut that should be the first on the market with something, not the last.

So why is it that Boxee, the startup, open source company from out of no where is able to secure access to these services while Microsoft can’t get them into Media Center for us?  Is it lack of enthusiasm?  If it is, that lack certainly doesn’t come from the enthusiast community.  If anything, this is one of the main things we’re clamoring for.  Will the content companies not play ball with MS?  Could be but why would they not want their content in another location?  Yeah, I can record it but either way I can skip commercials and both systems bring the content to multiple screens.  Does MS not care?  I can’t answer this one.  Only the folks in Redmond can.  Though again, I can’t see why.  It’s another feature, and one that would help sell Media Center and hardware, no small benefit for partners.

The fact is that none of us in the community know why we can’t have this content in Media Center or on our extenders.  Whether it’s Microsoft, the content providers or something of a combination is something that will remain a mystery until they either provide the content or kill off Media Center and the ehome team.

As I stated in a previous post, the Windows 7 and ehome teams have done a great job with Windows 7.  It’s too bad a lot of it is being overshadowed by a startup.

Microsoft introduced their Internet TV service in Vista Media Center.  It’s still in beta but from using it for a few days in 7MC I can tell you that they’ve made a few improvements.  The first thing is that they’ve added it to the guide.  You can remove these entries if you want to but it does make it a little more convenient.  The interface once you click into these “channels” has gotten a little better.  It still looks the same but seems to move a bit smoother both locally and on the Xbox 360 extender. 

While there’s quite a bit of content available, a lot of what I saw was the same stuff I saw three months ago the last time I looked at internet TV.  Without the addition of some real content (not just network previews) Media Center is definitely going to loose the online content battle.  There are a few full length shows from History Channel and National Geographic but nothing that’s going to keep people coming back.

As far as usability, again, it’s smoother than in the past and there doesn’t seem to be as much buffering as I experienced in the past.  Once a show starts it seems to keep going.  I only noticed one hiccup during one of the concerts my wife was watching.

The only complaint I have is that MS needs to institute some sort of timer on the commercials it shows.  I shouldn’t have to watch the same commercial every time I switch videos.  At least put five or six minutes between the things.  Also, there are videos listed, particularly in the music video section, which are no longer available.  the app moves to the next video automatically but don’t expect to be able to watch everything.

Overall, you can see the improvements that have been made to Internet TV since it was first offered.  Unfortunately with systems like SageTV and other set-top boxes offering Hulu, TV.com and others, Microsoft is really wasting their time with this.  They need to step up in the content area or just kill it off. 

Twitter and the blogs have been lit up today with talk about how Microsoft has treated Media Center.  It started with Chris Lanier saying that:

Not whole home connected entertainment, not Media Center in your living room, not Extenders, not high-end theaters, but “TV on your PC.” In other words, the days of Media Center being billed as the do-it-all center of your home are over (except for the custom market).

For the first time, Media Center officially has a market, and while that is good news that Microsoft has finally defined who they are developing for, it is bad news for most reading this post as you can now be sure Media Center will never be the platform you have dreamed of.

On the same day, Paul Thurrott of Windows Super Site posted that:

The list of Microsoft consumer stinkbombs is a mile high. Media Center. MediaRoom. UltimateTV. WebTV. PlaysForSure/Windows Media DRM. Zune. That Outlook-compatible phone from years back. Any product with the words "Microsoft" and "Home" in them. The Teddy Ruxbin bear thing. (And you thought I’d forgotten.) Don’t get me wrong: Many of these are good, even great products. But if it’s just me and 17 other people using them, what’s the point?

One look at TGB and obviously the Media Center community is larger than 18 people.  But that’s not the point.  Much like Ian wrote today on The Digital Lifestyle, I disagree with both of these posts.  Media Center certainly has the opportunity to be the “dream platform” and it definitely isn’t a “stinkbomb”.

Look, anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I have a love hate relationship with Media Center.  Yes, I love it, but I’m not afraid to give my opinion on what’s wrong with the app, UI, support, etc.  Media Center has yet to be all things to all people.  I still don’t have MKV support under Win 7.  I can’t get Netflix on my extender in the Media Center UI and my Zune playlists won’t play in Media Center or vice versa.  Yeah, MS only updates Media Center when a new OS comes out instead of giving us updates like everyone else gets.  And yeah, IT PISSES ME OFF!

That said, Media Center has come a long way since the beginning.  The problem with Microsoft is that they started this trend a long time before it was ready.  Only people who couldn’t afford a PC had WebTV and it was a joke.  But now every content provider on the internet is in a rush to get their content to your TV.  Microsoft has led the way on that front for a long time.  They’ve fallen behind at this point but as I posted the other day, the race isn’t lost yet.  Sometimes an entity as big as MS just needs a good kick in the rear to get things going.  It seems to me that they received a wakeup call with Vista and Win7 is going to be the result of that wakeup call.

I respect both of the gentlemen that kicked off this discussion and their place in the Media Center community of users/enthusiasts.  In this case however, I want to prove them wrong and I want Microsoft to help.  I want Media Center team members reading 7MC Taskforce and listening.  The fact that people take time to create these sites shows how passionate we are about Media Center.  They’ve been saying on TGB that they’re listening?  Well, here’s your chance to prove that you weren’t paying us lip service.  Show us that our beloved app isn’t dead in the water and prove these very respectable gentlemen wrong.

As the title states, Media Center, like the entire Windows OS, took a break during Vista.  I have no doubt that Windows 7 is the giant waking up, and that Media Center is going to join the party.  While I’m not completely happy with what we’ve been given so far, it’s an improvement.  Just keep the upgrades/updates coming.

MS has a choice with Media Center here and from my perspective now is the time to make it.  Either go toe to toe with the likes of SageTV, or resign yourself to wasting time on the project until you kill it.

Dear Windows 7 Team,

Don’t listen to the haters.  You’re the big dog on the block and that means there will always be people who will try and bring you down.  Just ignore them.  You’re off to a great start with this beta and only you guys and gals can make it better.  When they cry about how the beta wasn’t available on the first day, just let them know that this shows how much people want to try Win7.

Again, your headed in the right direction.  There are quirks of course, but this is a beta.  Quirks are expected.  When it comes to the features you’ve added, the progress is awesome.  And I’m just talking about non-Media Center related upgrades.  The new desktop features, Play To, and other little tweaks are great!  Keep it up.  Fix any issues you find and we’ll be all set.

When it comes to Media Center, you’re on the right track.  The new UI looks good, things run faster on the extender and you’ve added support for more codecs.  It’s obvious that you’ve been listening to the community.  The response is positive from the people I’ve heard from so far.

Great starts make for great projects.  At this point in your beta process I’d just like to give a list of things that I think will make the experience that much better.  As this is a Media Center blog, I’ll focus mainly on those points.

• Play To–Please make this able to sync multiple outputs.  I haven’t read enough about the technology to know if this is possible but it would be nice to send music to two or three systems at a time and have it play through the whole house.  Media Center users would love it because we wouldn’t have to buy something like a Sonos system.  (Also, if all it takes is a firmware update, it would be nice to be able to use my Zune to Play To throughout my house…hint, hint.  “That’s a nice remote ya got there!”)
• Add more codec support–You don’t have to supply them.  Most of us can install codec packs.  Work with the Xbox team to make it so that any file format will play on the Xbox 360 as an extender.  Make it so simple that anyone can do it.  If you want to be the center of entertainment for people, then normal folks have to be able to handle it.  Adding in things like Silverlight and Flash support would also allow us to get things like Netflix streaming into the Media Center UI.  I know I can go through my Xbox 360 dashboard, but again, simpler is better.
• Don’t let Chris Lanier’s post come true!–You can still win this battle and put Media Center on everyone’s TV.  Netflix, Hulu, the new TV.com, and Move Networks are popular and only becoming more so.  Work out partnerships with these companies or at least allow the content to make it to Media Center and the extenders.  3rd party developers will handle writing the apps for people.  If CES 2009 showed us one theme it’s that online content is coming to the living room.  You’re already in position to take advantage of this with Media Center built into Vista Premium and Ultimate as well as Windows 7.  Now just let them extend it.  (Nothing against Chris.  He runs a great site and writes a great blog.  I just want him to be wrong on this point!)
• Make Media Center talk to my Zune–I can’t use Zune playlists in Media Center.  I can’t use Media Center playlists on my Zune.  I can’t buy tracks from the Zune Marketplace in Media Center.  Make these technologies talk to each other.  I should be able to flag a recorded TV program in Media Center and the next time I connect my Zune to the PC it automatically syncs it.  Same goes for music and videos.  Much like I can listen to the radio on my Zune and then buy the track, do the same thing in Media Center. 
•  Screw DirecTV, there are other providers—So DirecTV decided they didn’t want to play ball with the HDPC-20.  Forget them and move on.  Work with Cable Labs to loosen the restrictions on CableCard.  I won’t buy an OEM system to get CableCard but I would consider buying a certain motherboard if it fit my needs.  As long as I can share that recorded content within my network, I’ll be happy.  Maybe Dish Network would like a shot at some hardware solution.  No matter who it is, get the broadcast HD content into the PC and let people use it. 

Please don’t take the above suggestions as criticism.  Again, you’ve given us a lot with Windows 7 and we appreciate it.  I have no doubt that Win7 will be a lot more successful than Vista has been so far.  These are suggestions on how to make Media Center the, well, center of people’s entertainment world within their home as well as how to let them take it even further with their Zune.

I hope we get to see some of these things, but I’m just an evangelist.  Thanks for reading and keep up the good work!

Sincerely,

Adam Thursby

Media Center Enthusiast

President-Elect Obama and his team have been saying over the last week that we need to delay the digital transition set to happen on February 17th.  Quite honestly, this is ridiculous.  Knowing most politicians, these people must thing that the below video is representative of the population of the United States:

Now, this isn’t a political blog, and it doesn’t matter to me what anyone’s viewpoint is on any particular politician.  The fact is that this transition was supposed to happen in 2006.  It didn’t happen then due to broadcaster lobbying.  Shouldn’t the broadcasters be lobbying for it to go through this time?  They’ve invested the money in new equipment.

I read the other day that the FCC estimates that 12% of people aren’t ready for the transition.  Well, guess what:  if they’re not ready by now they never will be.  To give you an example:

In life, there’s always that 10%.  This figure can be used whether talking about society as a whole or the people within a company/organization/group.  (Check figures on prison populations within different countries.  Not a whole lot of variation.)  Think about the people you work with.  I can almost guarantee that 10% of them cause more problems than they solve.  For some reason, this 10% always exists and there isn’t a whole lot you can do about it.  That’s what we’re seeing here.

Mr. Obama, there are those of us who have been waiting for this transition for years.  The 12% of Americans who can’t be bothered to prepare for this transition do not represent us.  Please allow this transition to go through so that everyone can get on the same page.  It’ll be easier to help those 12% of people once the transition is done.

My experience with Windows 7 so far is limited, but in the last few days, I’ve been playing with it enough to have some first impressions.  I’ve been taking notes while using the OS each time something strange or unexpected happened as well as the good things I’ve noticed so far.

Let’s go through the good stuff first.  Windows 7 runs a lot faster than Vista.  This is strange to me because when I check my system resources it appears as though they’re both using about the same amount when idle and while running apps.  I’m sure there are changes but everything looks to be close enough to escape notice.  At this point, I have Windows 7 running on a 5 year old Dell 4700C which shipped with Windows XP Media Center Edition and could barely touch Vista.  Oh, it ran, but so slowly that it was unbearable.  This isn’t the case with Windows 7.  The machine runs like a champ now and that’s without installing any drivers whatsoever.  (I’m also running Win7 on my Toshiba A200-S5000 laptop.  More on that in a minute.)  The only time this Dell seems to slow is when the music wall comes up in Media Center.  It would be nice to be able to turn it off.

Let’s talk about the laptop.  I want to put a disclaimer up first:  The Dell was a clean install while the Toshiba was upgraded.  I run A LOT of apps on this laptop (at one time:  Skype, Digsby, Tweetdeck, gosoft(work software), Feedreader, and Live Mesh are always on.)  I also kick on Zune, WMP, Firefox, Outlook 2007, Word 2007 and One Note regularly.  I want to have people realize that I know this is a lot to ask the system to do and that’s why I don’t see the bad things listed as necessarily being Windows 7’s fault.  It has issues but there are other things at play here.

After thinking about it for awhile, I realized that I can pretty much copy my notes into this post so that’s what I’m going to do.  You’ll find deeper explanations in red next to the comment.

General Notes:

• WMP 12 long to load over network. It took Windows Media Player almost two days to locate the media on my media server through the network.  Even some new local files took a long time.
• Video Drivers—Video drivers for the Intel integrated graphics card did not load upon installation.  I was given a warning message about this.
• LONG INSTALL!!! (upgrade)  The installation process took absolutely forever. (4+ hours) Again, the Dell was a clean installation and was very fast so I can only imagine this has something to do with doing an upgrade on a system with a lot of files and apps on it.
• Work software only runs as admin—If your company runs any kind of in house software, check it.  My teacher management software will run, but it only seems to work if I right click and run as administrator.  No big deal but it’s worth mentioning for people with that specialized software.
• Zune software not seeing Zune 80—This was a huge problem for me and a little long but let me see if I can explain.  After installing Win7 and playing for a bit, I decided to plug in my Zune80.  I saw a popup saying that drivers were being installed, then that they were installed successfully.  I disconnected and reconnected the Zune. At this point, my Zune software opened but the device never showed up.  In the interest of not making you read four more pages, I’ll just say that I have @volvoshine on Twitter to thank.  What it basically came down to was me uninstalling the drivers, uninstalling the Zune software, then reinstalling software, doing a complete wipe of my Zune (including firmware, instructions here) and then reconnecting.  Since then my Zune seems to have been running fine.  Thanks again to @volvoshine.  Check out his blog here. (PS:  I’m not the only one who had this problem.  I found at least three other references to the same issue out there on the interwebs.  See here for one of them.)
• Windows Live Writer Locked—This was a one time thing and I think related to the next point.
• Gets a little flaky from time to time. Restart solves problem. (won’t recycle files, winzip lockup.)—It seems as though, from time to time, applications that ran fine under Vista will have a momentary lapse.  Not just apps but Windows tasks as well.  To give an example:  Earlier today I attempted to send a folder on my desktop to the recycle bin.  Nothing huge, maybe 5 files totaling around 6 or so MB.  A window popped up saying “Preparing to Recycle”.  That was it.  It just sat there for 30 minutes before I finally had to stop the process and then restart.  Upon restarting the machine, and hitting delete again, the files were gone instantly.  This also happened with a WinZip lockup, Windows Live Writer and various other apps.  Again, there’s nothing consistent about the errors and a restart seems to solve the problem.

As I stated above, I can’t really tell if these are Windows 7 problems or if it’s due to the apps and hardware I’m running.  I do know that I don’t seem to get the random locks and whatnot on the Dell which was loaded with a clean installation, and is a slower machine.  However, I’ve figured out a way to find out what it might be:  Clean installation on the laptop. 

Tomorrow I will be doing a clean installation on my main Media Center PC.  Once that is completed and running as expected I will move to the laptop and do the same thing.  There’s only one hang up.  The video drivers on Toshiba’s site won’t install.  I’ve downloaded the drivers for the machine but if they won’t install I may have to instead load Vista from the recovery disk which comes with all of the drivers and installs them automatically and then upgrade before running any other apps.  Either way, to me, it’s a fresh install.   

Overall, I’m very happy with Windows 7.  Don’t let the above listed problems fool you.  The OS runs great for a beta and I have a feeling it’s going to be even better with a clean installation on my laptop.  I normally do one every six or so months anyway and that time is well past.  There are certain things which could be better and I’ll be discussing those tomorrow night during the live show.  If you want to hear all of my experiences so far, including those with “Play To”, Windows Media Player and Media Center, Please tune in.  Also, the show will be available through the widget to your right not long after.

I’ve already posted that I’ll be live blogging Steve Ballmer’s keynote speech this evening but I wanted to try and make this even more interactive. 

To help achieve that goal, I’ll also be hosting a call-in show during the speech.  If you’d like to join in the call and ask questions or tell us what you’d like from Microsoft in the next year, I encourage you to click the link in the box to your right and join the call.  I’ll be online starting at 9:25pm EST.  You can also join in by clicking here.

Hope to speak to some people tonight!

Since stepping up to the New Xbox Experience many people like myself have joined and are using Netflix’s “Watch Now” service through their Xbox 360 dashboard.  I have no doubt that this has been great for both Xbox Live and Netflix as paid accounts are required on both ends to use the service.

As a gamer, I already had my Xbox Live gold account.  No big deal.  I signed up for Netflix and I was ready to go.  Since we’ve been using the service for over a month now, I thought it time to provide some insight into the app as well as the good and the bad about it.

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