Charlie Owen - Om Malik's Take on Media Center and Front Row, Suggestions for Microsoft

Om Malik's Take on Media Center and Front Row, Suggestions for Microsoft

Om Malik quotes me on his blog with Microsoft Media Center Vs Apple FrontRow.

He laments his problems with the digital video recorder (DVR) features of Media Center, which to date he hasn't gotten to play nice with his Comcast set top box.* He believes we 'overreached' by including the DVR feature in Media Center and makes the following suggestion:

'So what should Microsoft do? Two things. First release a Media Center XP Lite. Free. Basically help turn most of the newer PCs into simple devices for aggregating photos, watching DVDs, streaming music and playing back downloadable videos.'

Om states he 'would gladly pay $49.95' for a standalone version of Apple Front Row according to his I Want My FrontRow-on-TV post. I wonder why he would advise us to give away software which has a good bit more consumer value? Has he called for Apple to drop the price of the iPod by some significant amount because someone else shipped a competing MP3 player? Hopefully Om will elaborate further, because right now this makes zero sense from a business perspective.

Anywho...

I hope Om knows he can get a Media Center PC today without a TV tuner and thus fulfill his desire for a 'lite' version of Media Center on par with the Apple Front Row features (i.e. Photos, DVD, Music, Videos) for *considerably* less than a comparably equipped iMac with Front Row.

* My family uses a dual tuner Media Center with two Comcast set top boxes via IR blasting on a regular basis. While I have seen IR blasting issues (wrong channel recorded) they have been extremely rare in my experience.

Categories: Front Row | Media Center | Comments [2] |

| Posted on Monday, October 24, 2005 6:11:56 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Monday, October 24, 2005 2:16:49 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

I think what OM is proposing is giving away the enhanced 10 ft interface that MCE enables. He like many view the MCE feature set (minus the DVR functionality) as simply an extended Media Player. If you go with that thinking then releasing MCE is almost like an alternate skin for MP9 or 10. This also equates it to Front Row since in many ways it is an alternate 10 ft interface for iTunes.

Also by selling MCE without TV tuners it furthers this thinking. For many people currently purchasing MCE it is being used as a normal desktop with some media enhancements. It is almost like the 95 days where Plus was an add-on to enable enhanced media features. Could the MCE featureset be packaged as an add-on? What core functionality does MCE include beyond the 10ft interface and DVR?

Brian Hoyt

Monday, October 24, 2005 4:00:52 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

To expand on Malik's idea of "Media Center XP Lite", it would be great if the PVR (recording what you are watching so you can rewind) functionality of the Media Center could be turned off.

There are times when my Media Center "stutters", and it would be nice to turn off functionality step by step to see what exactly is causing it. Normally, I don't need this functionality, so why make my machine (and hard drive) do the extra work?

Jon Lipsky

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