Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Shortly after Thomas Hawk got a Mac I began to think I was really missing something, thinking maybe they had been able to catch up in the 7 or so years it took us to get Windows Vista out the door. So, right before the Christmas holidays (December 13) while visiting the Apple store in Portland, OR I succumbed to the commercials and bought myself a white MacBook. I will admit to being a little ashamed -- and really couldn't bring myself to let folks know I even had the thing. But then had coffee with Steve Makofsky at Redmond Town Center and he made me feel better, helping me understand it's perfectly OK and natural to like the Mac. Needless to say, it's been wonderful ever since and I couldn't even think of going back to Windows.

I'm a regular follower of the Adobe blog over at http://blogs.adobe.com/ and generally speaking I learn a lot (note I'm a passionate Adobe products user, particularly PhotoShop and Illustrator). Every once in a while they throw rocks towards Microsoft, and it does leave me with a bad taste. Case in point: In 'Why Apollo?' Andrew Shebanow writes...

"I normally don't like to do those "me too" sorts of posts Microsoft folks seem to specialize in, where you just say "look at this great article my coworker wrote". To me, its always seemed like a rather distasteful way to do PageRank/TechMeme manipulation."

As for me, when I link to another Microsoft employee blog it's because I found the information helpful or new. For example, Aaron Stebner recently posted Mailbag: How can I create a loading page for an MCML application? and I linked to it from our team platform blog here.

Why...?

1. I didn't know Aaron was working on this, and thought it was quite neat, and that others would find it highly useful.
2. I try to make it a point to aggregate all great technical docs in one place on our Windows Media Center Platform Team blog (makes search easier).
3. There are bound to be folks who subscribe to our platform team blog but NOT Aarons blog -- they might not see this great resource unless I link.

Furthermore, I don't link to every one of Aarons posts (like this one, or that one or the one over here which is related to Windows Media Center development). For the most part, where and when I link is highly correlated to my opinion of the value of the material. It's not part of some uber conspiracy to manipulate the system. And I don't think most Microsoft bloggers link for the sake of linking.

Andrew, I don't think I would have discovered Why Apollo? or Mike Chambers had you not linked. That's exactly WHY you want to link -- to show your readers who you read, or listen to, or respect -- even if they happen to work for the same company you do.

I don't think it's distateful -- it's actually respectful in most cases.

Besides, you can always unsubscribe if you find the linking to be gratuitous.

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!!!

I made a pretty bad mistake the other day with a mailbag post while trying to reach out to the Windows Media Center online community of grass root supporters -- those early adopters who constantly (and rightfully) push us to deliver more value. I took some information which was already public knowledge and connected dots which -- honestly -- weren't there to connect. It was a mistake on my part to infer any sort of timeframe schedule going forward. Doing so set the wrong expectations for my readers and opened up a can of speculation and question worms which were way off base. Above all, I pride myself on being a source you can trust -- and the other day I let you down -- I’ll try not to do that again. [Note to self: Read The Corporate Weblog Manifesto again.]

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?

When = Soon, but difficult to say exactly when as each OEM works on finalizing their offerings. The Windows Media Center team is working with each to make sure these make it to market as soon as possible. (Yeah, I know -- this sounds like a total non-answer -- it's really the best information I have at the moment.)

Where = Dell, Sony, Velocity Media, Toshiba and Niveus Media have announced they will be selling CableCard equipped Windows Media Center systems. Take your pick and start monitoring those OEM websites for ordering details.

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.

[Kinda like the way that title rhymes. Anywho...]

I just love the way Ed Bott seems to be able to cut through all the hyperbole and bring some reality to the conversation. As usual, he is able to put the whole Windows Vista adoption rate into perspective. Check out his Slow start for Vista? So what else is new?

I promised Ian Dixon a few days ago I would start a new series of posts here at Retrosight for end users of Windows Media Center and since the MVPs are in town getting ready to ask quite a lot of questions I thought I would kick things off a little earlier than he expects. I'm going call these posts 'Mailbag' (modeled after Aaron) and they will be totally community driven.

So...

Leave your question as a comment for this post -- I'll answer one per comment in the order in which they are posted. If you leave more than one question per comment, I'll answer your first one and ignore the rest to give everyone a chance to ask. I'll shoot for one per week, but may be more or less depending on my bandwidth and how involved the questions or answers become.

Update: I just answered the first, and had to gently wordsmith the question a little bit to post in the title. If you post a question and I wordsmith to make things clearer, and you think I changed the question in the process, post a comment on my answer post (not here) and I'll try to clarify.

[You can see this coming...] There will inevitably be some questions I probably won't be able to answer with as much detail as you wish (like 'Can you list out the entire feature set for the next version?') -- but I will make every effort to give you a meaningful answer.

What do you want to know about the Windows Media Center product or team?