Microsoft Monitor, Dazed and Confused.

Recently Joe Wilcox from Jupiter Media went monitor shopping and evaluated how MCE looked on those monitors and during this discovered some problems with how MCE is presented at retail:

• Recorded TV looked different on the same monitor at two different stores
• MCEs not correctly setup or not at all(first run had not even been run on one!)
• ClearType not enabled for LCD monitors
• Music played through Winamp and not MCE or WMP

He ends with:

I can’t strongly enough encourage Microsoft and its PC partners to treat seriously this channel problem. The

Recently I also examined how MCE was sold at retail. I visited several stores including Circuit City, Best Buy, Frys and Magnolia AV. My high level complaints are:

• MCEs indistinguishable from other Windows PCs
• MCEs were running some generic OEM demo program and users were unable to play with the MCE UI themselves
• MCEs were in the computer section instead of also being sold in the TV section alongside Tivos and ReplayTV
• Salespeople had no clue about MCE
• At Magnolia AV, a high end AV shop, they did not even stock them!

Once MCE 2005 hits stores shortly these problems should be resolved.

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TVTonic for Media Center PCs.

Downloads content to your hard drive for on demand viewing.

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Wired, Phone Lines Deliver Next-Gen TV:

TV over phone lines — also known as TV over internet protocol, or TVIP — is already taking root in Europe, with offerings from France Telecom, Italy’s FastWeb, Britain’s HomeChoice and others. There are many more on the way, with Britain’s top fixed-line phone company, BT Group, in talks with content companies as it prepares to launch its own service.

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I am soon going to start weblogging for work about Media Center. I would have started blogging about Media Center sooner but all my work here has been on our upcoming release which I obviously can’t talk about, but soon that will change :).

How should I set this up? All I need is an RSS feed that our Expert Zone people can read and do with as they please. My options are:

• Blog about Media Center at http://weblogs.asp.net/mgoyer while keeping all non-Media Center content here?
• Blog about Media Center here but categorize the content as media center?
• Blog about Media Center at http://mediacenter.mattgoyer.com while keeping all non-Media Center content here?

Dare I dilute my oh so boring personal life with work content?

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Today, as we sat contemplating living room killer apps, one of my Media Center designer friends pointed me to the webzine (?), CBC Radio 3, and we marvelled at the beauty of their design and their excellent choice of content. With a little bit of work it could easily be transformed into a very nice 10′ application. In fact it is one of the first 2′ sites that I’ve seen that should absolutely have a 10′ version. Why? The photography with music with writing just blends so nicely together and is just suited for consuming on a Sunday afternoon from the couch.

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Next Friday the eHome PM teams are racing, (I mean, team building), two 70 foot sail boats out to Bainbridge with Emerald City Charters. One of them is a Santa Cruz 70. Hopefully the weather improves by then!

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Should I rip this?

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MSN Music Store has RSS

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