One of my favorite bloggers, Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror fame has just posted Building Your Own Home Theater PC. Adding to his numbers, if you add a SilverStone case ($100), Seagate 500GB SATA drive ($110) (both from http://www.newegg.com as are Jeff's components) and you've got yourself a pretty nice HTPC for around $460 sans the operating system and tuner card(s) of your choice. Anybody remember the days when a single tuner Windows Media Center box first came out for $2,500 and was OEM only?

My, how times have changed.

I thought this was pretty cool...

If you are in the USA launch Windows Media Center > TV + Movies > Internet TV > Top Picks > Super Bowl Ads.

I thought the Bridgestone ad with Alice Cooper and Richard Simmons cameos was pretty funny.

A blogging friend stopped by my office this morning and one of the first questions was: Where have you been with your blogging as of late?

He is about the 6th person to ask -- so, it's probably about time to give you some explanation.

First, nearly the entire month of October 2007 was devoted to weighing an opportunity I had to join another fantastically great team here at Microsoft. Imagine being given the choice of two huge lollipops both of which are your favorite flavors -- the proverbial kid in a candy store analogy. One of the choices is the team which produces Windows Media Center (I'm a big fan). The other was a team and a hiring manager for whom I have a large amount of respect. In the end, I chose to stay here on the Windows Media Center team -- I didn't feel as though I was quite done with this product and the things I personally want it to do for customers. The move to the other team would have also created a new period of professional relationship building -- I felt I had put my family through that enough with our move to the Pacific Northwest back in mid-2004 (more about that later). It was an *incredible* experience and I'm very glad I took the time to explore a change in career direction. I am very grateful for the advice offered from close friends both internal and external to Microsoft (you know who you are). The only downside is it left me quite a bit frazzled from a career standpoint -- I simply didn't have the energy to post here on the blog during October or the month that followed.

Second, I basically took the month of December 2007 as vacation. I mean a real (almost) complete disconnect from work related things -- this is rare -- just ask my co-workers who find me replying to emails while on vacation. Postings by me on places like http://discuss.mediacentersandbox.com even dropped off quite sharply. Our family traveled back to the East coast to see family and friends and I made a concerted effort to stay offline. When we returned I picked up some sort of flu bug which had me out of work for a complete week, with another two weeks of recovery time during which I didn't have a whole lot of energy. I haven't been that sick in probably 15 years. So, that explains December 2007 and most of January 2008.

Third, it was an incredibly busy time during all of these months (October 2007 - December 2008) from a day job perspective (most blogging is done on nights / weekends). Yes, we are working on the next version of Windows -- no surprise there. The ebb and flow of program management happened to be really flowing instead of ebbing during this time (not that there is much of an ebb anytime here at Microsoft, but there times when it is less busy than normal). I'd like to think I did a pretty good job of managing things, especially given the career churn in October outlined above. But several things had to 'give way' -- and blogging was one of them. And... I can't just blog about what happens in the day job -- no matter how much Mary Jo really wishes I would.

Fourth, I really took a good, hard look during October - December to think about my community involvement, including posting here. There are so many good and great things about blogging -- but one of the few drawbacks is it's really a scattershot method of communication, and the conversations it fosters can amplify the noise. What starts off in one distinct direction can be randomized into multiple other directions far removed from the original. These conversations demonstrate this to be wholly true. I literally worked through each and every comment on those two posts and created a list of feature requests. The list was *incredibly* long and I came to the realization there was absolutely no way I could personally make all of those things happen -- I found this to be incredibly frustrating because I really do like to take action on your feedback. As a result, I decided the posts weren't that incredibly helpful or useful except to allow the community to vent their frustrations. They were way too broad to start, and only got broader as the conversation continued.

Add to that much of the posting here is done on my personal time and took away from family activities. Family is everything. (Some of you are probably thinking: 'Well, DUH! It's amazing how easy it is to lose sight of the obvious.). The sacrifice they made to allow me to take my 'dream job' in 2004 was incredible. My wife and daughters deserve for me to be home physically AND mentally. I've reached a point where a lot of the heavy lifting of establishing myself on a new team is done in many respects -- I can now restore work-life balance to, well, balance. I've made a commitment to them to really be home when I'm home, and I'm beginning to see those dividends return to me in lots of ways. As a result posting here, a majority of which took place when I was at home, will naturally be lessened. Case in point, I'm writing this while at work today instead of tonight at home as was the usual. That feels *really* good from a father and husband perspective.

So, where does that leave us...?

I've decided there will be less broad communication here on the blog and more engagement with individuals in the community on a personal level this year. I'm going to invest my time with a deliberate and constrained group of people, mostly around how our product can be better for all. Some of those direct one:one projects are already underway and you should see the reports on some of them out here in the blogosphere at some point. I'll link to those as folks decide to chat about them publicly, and that's where the majority of my postings for this year will originate. I'll also be making it a point to spend more time with our Community Dev Experts over on http://discuss.mediacentersandbox.com. Finally, any extra brain cycles I have outside of working hours will be spent making in-depth resources available for Windows Media Center customers for the next version.

In a nutshell: I'm hoping less here becomes more in a real, tangible sense for Windows Media Center customers.

If you read my blog and are a Media Center enthusiast you've no doubt read the comments attached to And It Has Media Center Extender Built In. I'm going to head up an effort here at Microsoft between the Media Center, XBox and Zune teams to give you a set of resources which help you put our products together and begin to realize the 'Connected Home' dream. It will probably start out as a whitepaper -- it *might* include things like scripts or tools -- but don't hold me to the latter. Along the way I'm almost sure we will find areas of improvement, and you have my word we will file bugs or feature requests to consider what we can do in future versions to make life better.

But first, I need your help to make sure we cover the scenarios. Here is what we have so far -- would you add any others...?

1) Standalone Windows Media Center machine.
2) Windows Media Center + XBox 360 Media Experiences.
3) Windows Media Center + XBox 360 Media Center Extender(s).
4) Windows Media Center + Windows Home Server + XBox 360 Media Center Extender(s).
5) Multiple Windows Media Center machines + Windows Home Server + XBox 360 Media Center Extender(s).
6) Zune added to any of the above.

I can't believe Chris posted the press release but didn't go nuts around the fact the new XBox 360 Arcade has the same great Media Center Extender built in as all of its predecessors. I was happily surprised to note these have HDMI on board -- there is a LOT of bang for buck this Christmas in this new arcade SKU for consumers. Kudos to the XBox team for making it happen!

The day after the geek dinner Scott Hanselman and I sat down to chat about developing for Windows Media Center for Hanselminutes 82. The result is a pretty nice introduction to what you need for development, the tools included in the SDK, some of the samples which are included in the SDK and some basic beginner concepts. I posted is a detailed list of links which corresponds to the various topics we covered during the podcast over on Sandbox at http://blog.mediacentersandbox.com/Hanselminutes82DevelopmentForMediaCenter.aspx.

At the geek dinner the other night and in a subsequent conversation with Scott Hanselman it was noted that many people probably have Windows Media Center but don't realize they do. If you have Windows Home Premium or Windows Ultimate then Windows Media Center is ready and waiting for you to give it a try. If you didn't get a tuner with yours, Adam Pash has a post over on LifeHacker titled Turn Your Windows PC into a Media Center Powerhouse On the Cheap which has some details on how to remedy -- and the comments are filled with good information as well.

Wow. Has it been this long? I guess it has. Anyway, Mack has a great writeup on the history of Windows Media Center which is worth reading.

"On September 3rd, Microsoft will celebrate the five year anniversary of Windows Media Center, arguably one of the company’s more successful products. Windows XP Media Center Edition was released to manufacturers in the United States and Canada in 2002, and Microsoft has followed up with a number of releases since then, most recently as part of Windows Vista. The software is at the core of Microsoft’s digital media strategy and looks to have a bright future ahead. In this post we’ll take a look at what Windows Media Center is, the levels of success it has achieved thus far, and finally we’ll touch on where Microsoft might take the product in the next few years."

Get the full story over at http://www.last100.com/2007/08/23/windows-media-center-a-microsoft-success-story/.

Thanks, Mack...!

Update: I just read this post in my news aggregator and some of the formatting didn't make the translation. For best evaluation you should probably look at this post in your web browser at http://blog.retrosight.com/DocumentationWhichDoYouLikeBetter.aspx.

I'm willing to bet Jeff Atwood has an opinion about this given his recent post Escaping From Gilligan's Island. We've been having an internal debate on how to best document steps to create applications -- mostly so folks find it easy to get it right the first time (hence the hat tip to Jeff's post).

I'd like to get your opinion on which of the following set of steps you find easier to follow (A or B) -- these steps are based on the Visual C# 2005 Express Edition Integrated Design Environment if you would like to try them out for real.

I was wondering if there are any computer user groups in North Carolina who would like to sit down and chat about Windows Media Center...? If there are and you'd like to get together, drop me an email at charlieo@microsoft.com and let's chat. I'll be in the Raleigh area as well at some point so could do a chat there as well.

[Update: Corrected email address. Dang it.]

Apple is a huge competitor in the space Windows Media Center seeks to inhabit. Evidence?

Front Row and Windows Media Center

Apple TV and Media Center Extender

But even though I want to compare and contrast these products I find myself always holding back.

Why?

Because of the signal to noise ratio. On the somewhat rare instance I do post something related to Apple it almost never fails that folks show up bringing nothing to the conversation of value. Case in point, go read the two comments on Thoughts on iPod Amnesty Bin. After reading those I again had to ask myself 'why bother'.

Mary Jo and Long are beginning to understand the pitfalls of writing anything other than high praises of Apple.

So, I ask myself would it be worth the time and effort to give my perspective of MacOS, iPod and AppleTV or will I be labeled as just another Apple hater who works for Microsoft. Can I count on the community (both PC and Mac) to engage in the conversation?

In DVR Feature I'm Waiting For Michael Gartenberg is floating the following concept...

"What I want is to be able to start recording a series and tell the DVR to record every episode of a given season and then to sort them, not on the day they were recorded on the DVR but rather, on the day they were broadcast. The guide would be smart enough to fill in episodes as they are shown, no matter when they are shown. All this info is readily available (I can even see in most DVR guides the original broadcast date but can't sort on it.)"

My wife is a Law & Order fanatic (all flavors, SVU, CI, etc.) and she has wanted this *and* the ability to only record episodes she has not seen in the past.

I'm pretty sure both of these would be doable with our platform -- I'll have to look into this further. Maybe one of the community devs over at http://discuss.mediacentersandbox.com/forums would like to take on this project and make Michael's dreams come true.

I second this emotion: Microsoft Finally Gets Zune Marketing Right. I bought a Zune this past Friday because of that commercial and am looking forward to comparing it with my iPod 5G. 'Nuff said.

If you happen to be at Mix and want to chat about Windows Media Center head over to the Sandbox area and ask for Eric Voetberg, Jason Suess or Andrew Adamyk. While there you can pick up a DVD chock full of resources for those wanting to learn more about developing for Windows Media Center in managed code and / or Media Center Markup Language. It includes the latest rev of the SDK (it's already posted to MSDN online and will be going up to the download center in the next day or two) as well as some fairly extensive training materials.

I absolutely LOVE IT when my peers get involved in community efforts. I was floored the other day when I learned Jessica Zahn (Program Manager on the Windows Media Center TV team) has her own forum over on thegreenbutton.com called Ask Jessica and it has over 200 posts, all of which she has read and a majority of which she has replied to directly. Makes my Mailbag feature here on the blog seem like the American Idol tryouts...the epitome of amateur!

She is also getting other Windows Media Center team members involved, like Noah.

Accessibility is pretty important to us, and we want to make Windows Media Center easy to use for visually impaired folks. The default experience in Windows Media Center makes your digital media much more accessible to start with compared to Windows Media Player, iTunes or Zune -- because everything is bigger (your album art, the text, selectable items, etc.). There are some high contrast accessibility features you can turn on which make it even easier to read and navigate Windows Media Center if you are vision impaired. Get to them via Tasks > Settings > General > Visual and Sound Effects > Color Scheme. Here is what they look like.

High Contrast - White

High Contrast Black

I'll confess I didn't know much about European TV standards until I listened to Ian Dixon interview Rathe Hollingum from our Ireland developer team. According to that show, there are no DVB-S or DVB-S2 tuner cards which record directly from those sources available today. What you *can* do today (which Rathe points out) is to use a DVB-S(2) set top box and infrared control cable. For more information check out http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/mediacenter/tvandmovies.mspx and http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/using/setup/settop.mspx. There is a lot of good information in the podcast above about support of European TV standards -- give a listen if you are interested in this space.

P.S. Congrats to Ian on 100 shows -- you ROCK!!!

After reading about his poor experience working with the release candidate of Windows Vista at the last WinHEC I contacted Brier and offered to provide a Windows Media Center PC to take for a spin. Using computers prepped for events like WinHEC are always a dicey proposition -- most of the time they are multi-purpose and have therefore been touched by multiple folks with differing goals (which might not be compatible) before reaching the show floor. Throw in a beta OS and -- well -- you can almost guarantee the outcome isn't going to be very positive. Brier politely declined to take me up on the offer at that time. (Never was sure why, but my best guess was obviated with his article today.)

Brier contacted me last week via email with a note invoking that prior conversation and noting he 'ended up borrowing a TouchSmart from HP and swapped it for my living room TV for a few months' and was preparing an article on his experiences which he published today. I'll admit I literally chuckled out loud when I read his email -- the TouchSmart computer was designed for the kitchen, not the living room, so my initial reaction was 'no good can come from this'. What's a good analogy here...? Perhaps buying some great teak outdoor patio furniture and putting it in your family room is a good one. Needless to say I was interested in hearing about his experiences for better or worse so I responded and we had a great conversation.

Some thoughts after reading his article...

1) It sure would be nice if a journalist would review a Windows Media Center system as our team envisions. Let us hear about your environment, and then help you select a combination of hardware which addresses your needs and wishes. Some might say this would affect the integrity of the writer. I don't think so -- as long as the writer is up front about the assistance he got from Microsoft.

2) It would be great if the major OEMs were more selective of 'value add' software they choose to place on the machine (see Briers follow up posted this afternoon). Unfortunately Briers experience with preinstalled stuff is the norm -- sadly. But for a very few exceptions, whenever I help family and friends purchase a new computer I have it delivered to my house first where I perform a clean install of the operating system to avoid this stuff. Some folks, particularly on our OEM team, might go nuts when they read this, since OEMs are our bread and butter. Wake up -- this stuff degrades the user experience far too much. I know, sounds strange coming from a platform guy -- but this stuff *has* to get better folks -- plain and simple. Build GREAT software on the platform -- or choose NOT to ship the software.

3) My comment to Brier "I would really like for somebody to do a follow-up or a couple of follow-ups — they seem to put these great things out there, but there's not a version 2 or a version 3" was in the context of driving the costs down on great form factors for the living room. We've already got some great boxes designed as dedicated machines for your stereo stack -- but unfortunately the price points remain fairly high on them. It is interesting to note that for $400 less than the cost of the TouchSmart you can have an HP m7790e for the home office with almost exactly the same specs for the internals (processor, memory, etc.) plus an XBox 360 (with built in Media Center Extender) and a brand new high quality wired + wireless router (total for all of that is $1,400 as priced tonight, compared to $1,800 for the TouchSmart). More bang. Less buck.

Oh, and the offer still stands, Brier -- aren't you curious to see how well this stuff works as originally designed?

Reading this question last night compelled me to make a meeting today where our Windows Media Center MVPs learned more about Windows Home Server from Charlie Kindel and another gentleman from the team (I had to cut out and go to a feature team meeting before I could get his name -- but I'll circle back). I expect those MVPs will be able to give you additional thoughts, but here is a start.

In a nutshell...

Windows Home Server: Helping families with multiple PCs connect their digital experiences, providing a familiar and reliable way to store, access, share and automatically protect what is most important. *

Windows Media Center: Helping families enjoy the digital experiences stored on the PC from the comfort of their couch or in other rooms of the house with an intuitive and easy to use interface. **

In other words, two separate products with goals that are highly complementary to each other. Based on what little I saw today they will each benefit *immediately* once Windows Home Server ships. Longer term, I believe we will see the two product teams collaborating more -- perhaps even creating features unique to the intersection of Windows Media Center + Windows Home Server. After the presentation today I'm definitely going to replace my Windows Server 2003 box here at home with a Windows Home Server and start playing around to find the synergies and goodness.

* This came from an excellent post by Charlie: Why Doesn't Windows Home Server do foo? Go there to learn more about their vision and goals -- it's also a good post on feature development work in general.

** I made this up to kinda, sorta match up with the Windows Home Server mission statement for contrast. It's not 'official' marketing blurb -- but is a pretty good description of the Windows Media Center goal.

I've been meaning to do a 'brain dump' of why we don't make the Windows Media Center look and feel available to third party developers. Here goes...

Application Compatability Risk
We know exactly who uses our buttons, galleries, templates, etc. -- us. If we change these we break exactly one application -- Windows Media Center. Making them available to third parties imparts a certain amount of risk in that we can break applications without knowing we have done so. For example, we have tweaked media galleries in every version of Windows Media Center to date. Compare the music gallery in Emerald to the one in Diamond, for example of one of the more dramatic changes. What happens if your app is based on our gallery because it assumes certain things about that gallery which are incompatible with our new gallery. Trouble for us -- and you.

Variety Is The Spice Of Life
It would be a very boring world if every application looked like Windows Media Center. We do not have the market cornered in great experiences designed for use with remote control. Now that we have a platform (Windows Media Center Presentation Layer) which allows you to do the same class of animations (including full fidelity remoting to XBox 360 Media Center Extender) as Windows Media Center itself we no longer have this 'thunking down' into a low fidelity HTML experience. I'm excited to see what folks are able to do with this power at their fingertips, and certainly expect developer enthusiasts to start shipping features which surpass our own (have you seen this http://mobilewares.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!78533A1A2E078194!177.entry -- my wife was asking how she could keep track of Law & Order episodes the other night, and this app holds the promise of just that feature --pretty darn cool).

Public vs. Private Platform
Because we are both a product and a platform we only have so much time to create the public platform, and the public platform will always be a subset of the private platform (stuff we use to create our product) due to this time constraint. The Windows Media Center user experience relies in some cases on private platform features not present in the public platform. Let me give you an example: The lens effect seen on the Windows Media Center Start Menu when you navigate items in the horizontal strips. Our design team wanted a very specific (and quite subtle) look and feel in this lens effect which could not be created to their satisfaction without a *huge* investment in MCML authoring (and even then, we still really couldn't give them exactly what they desired). So we wrote new rendering code (which is in itself non-trivial) to accomplish the effect -- but it came in too late to be considered part of what we could expose publicly. At some point in any software you have to make a decision about what you will vs. won't ship (even if you use an Agile method or 'ship daily' as can be done with web apps). All of that to say this: It's not possible to give you the controls unless they can be accomplished with the public platform. Classic chicken or egg first problem.

Focus On The Fundamentals
We are still focused on making sure the platform fundamentals are in place -- for example, expanding on what you can do with web application approach (see http://blog.mediacentersandbox.com/PermaLink,guid,cb622812-d80f-45d2-82d6-a54099e62e21.aspx). For example, you can't use session cookies in web apps today -- it's way more important to get this in than trying to recreate Windows Media Center look and feel for the public platform (see previous point).

Maintaining Brands
I'm sure some folks will zero in on this particular point and say 'I knew it -- it's all about the money!' So, up front I'll admit this could also be titled 'who pays our bills' -- which is why I put it at the bottom of this list -- so you would read the prior items first and hopefully see it's a wholistic decision process. We are, after all, out to make a profit for ourselves and shareholders. With but a few exceptions, everyone who has a day job does it to make a living. This puts food on our table and a roof over our heads. But I digress... We make the platform for multiple audiences -- big, brand name partners and individual developer enthusiasts, and many, many medium and small entities in between (think in terms of Large, Medium, Small and Individual audiences). Unfortunately, the needs of these groups will inevitably conflict in some ways -- and this is one of those areas. The big companies who have well established brands will never use a Microsoft brand for their experiences -- it diminishes their brand if they do (and they spend GOBS of money and resources into maintaining their brand -- sometimes too much, and at the expense of great experiences, but that's a topic for another day). We could do a bunch of work to expose our look and feel, but the large and medium shops will never use them. Never. And increasingly, neither do the small shops. Honestly, it's never come up in the list of feature requests from large or medium shops and only very rarely from the small shops. That means we can realize a zero return on investment in this area in terms of dollars. At the end of the day, those partners are what makes or breaks our platform from a 'budget' perspective. It would be great if we could make a platform solely for the individual (aka developer enthusiast) audience, but at this point in the Windows Media Center platform life we can't build a business on this alone. As we grow, and developer enthusiasts grow, we hope to do more things specifically for this audience. The Z sample application is a great example of where I specifically added 'features' to our SDK which would target and assist the individual developer enthusiast -- and hopefully it's a great start.

Maximum Flexibility
Our platform provides for maximum design flexibility at the cost of reuse. We propose 'one size fits all' is not a true statement -- therefore the platform is one which can be tailored at the extreme for any purpose. We understand this precludes many development folks who are used to other types of platforms which provide controls. We've been pretty honest and straightforward the platform may be difficult to grasp for the mass market developer or weekend coder.

Resource Constraints
As with any software product or platform there is a finite amount of resources to put into the project. We've evaluated the idea of including the Windows Media Center controls in our platform resources with each release. And with each release it's been deemed as less valuable than improving the features of the existing platform of visual primitives. 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.

[3/26/2008 Edited To Add the Maximum Flexibility and Resource Constraints sections.]

With Windows Vista barely one week past RTM the Windows Media Center team started our first milestone for the next version this week. One of the guiding principles we will use to determine features for vNext is identifying and removing roadblocks which keep people from using Windows Media Center.

One example of this is the new Express Setup you find in 'Diamond'. 'Emerald' and previous versions (version history and codenames) forced the user into a rather lengthy first run setup wizard about 10-14 pages at minimum for most users. By contrast, the new Express Setup in 'Diamond' requires but a single action the first time you launch Windows Media Center before you are instantly able to start using the features.

We would love to hear your thoughts about blocking issues which keep you from fully enjoying Windows Media Center more. Leave comments for the team to read.