Ed Bott has a ton of expertise when it comes to talking about Media Center and Windows in general.  So when an opportunity comes to have a listen to his insight, you take it.  Yesterday I had the opportunity to join the live chat with Ian Dixon from The Digital Lifestyle and I must say that while not all of my questions were answered, there was some good information and I wanted to share it here.

The biggest topic was of course the Windows TV Pack 2008 or "Fiji" as it used to be known.  I myself wasn’t happy when I learned that this would be an OEM only package, but after listening yesterday, I have to say that I’m happy I didn’t use the power of the web to find it.  Mr. Bott’s take is that Fiji ended up being more about international TV support than anything else.  I live in the US so most of the perks it provided wouldn’t have helped most of us anyway.  So, no big loss right?  Yes and no.  MS did cut certain parts out to get Fiji out there.  H.264 and DirecTV support…or did they? 

I’ve heard rumblings of things like DirecTV and H.264 support for a long time.  However, after listening to Ed, I have to wonder if these are things that MS promised would come along with this update or if it was the community convincing itself that these things would be included. 

Another interesting point was made.  Mr. Bott sees Fiji being an OEM only release as a way for MS to "beta test" features that may be included in a Windows 7 version of media center.  If this is true, then I have to say thank you to MS.  Nothing gets me going more than having an update or new software come out and my VMC won’t work.  It happened to me with MCE2k5.  At one point I installed a Windows update that basically killed my DRM for HBO, Showtime, and Cinimax.  It rendered those channels unwatchable.

Ed did also mention however that at some point MS changed what Fiji was going to be and didn’t communicate this to the community.  When you have a strong core community surrounding your product, not telling them what’s going on is always a bad move.  If MS wants media center to be a success (and I certainly do) then they need to communicate with the community that supports it.

The people attending the live show seemed enthusiastic but also clamoring for information.  Two things that stuck out to me in the chat room were better integration and media center as a separate product. 

I’ve mentioned integration here before.  If MS wants to make media center mainstream and if they want to compete on the home entertainment front with Apple and other companies, then all of their products need to play well together.  I should be able to use the Zune marketplace inside VMC and on extenders.  Windows Home Server should function as a backup for TV, video, etc. and do it automatically.  And, other VMC PCs in my home should act as extenders.

As far as media center as a separate product?  Probably not going to happen, but I can hope right?  I think we’d benefit from this as media center is currently hemmed into Vista and therefore is stuck with the long upgrade cycle.  Because there exsists only a small community of users, it’s not worth it for MS to do frequent updates.  I think a stand alone or add in product that would be easier for non tech geeks to use would help expand our community and get us more support from MS.

All in all, it was an excellent conversation yesterday.  We didn’t get to hear about everything, but it provided some good insight into Microsoft’s thinking regarding media center.  Hopefully someone in Redmond is listening, because we are certainly talking in the VMC community.

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