I am cancelling my Napster subscription.

For the last four months I have been paying $10 a month for a Napster subscription which enables me to stream and download a variety of albums. However, in the last four weeks I have wanted eight albums and of those only one was available via Napster’s monthly subscription program. The rest were available which is amazing that they have that much breadth but you have to pay $10USD to download the album. It appears as if more and more new releases on Napster are available for purchase only and aren’t provided as part of the streaming package.

So instead of paying $10USD to download the albums I wanted I turned to Half.com and picked up the albums for around ~$10USD; the same price as Napster. Sure it takes three to four days for the CDs to arrive but once they do I can rip the CD at home on my Media Center, take the CD to the office where I rip it again for my office Media Center, and if I still had an iPod I could transfer the tracks over there as well. In short, I’m willing to trade waiting four days for the convenience of not having to deal with Napster’s DRM restrictions.

It is probably also worth noting that I am now too lazy to both using sites like Soulseek to download music for ‘free’.

While the primary reason I am cancelling my Napster subscription is that they are not streaming the artists I want to listen to and I dislike their DRM their Media Center could use some improvement. Here are some of my suggestions:

• Enable mouse support.
  The reality is that Media Centers are not used exclusively in the living room with a remote control. My office Media Center sits under my desk and I use a keyboard and mouse with it, and while my home Media Center is setup in the living room I have a Gyration wireless keyboard and mouse. I love using a remote control to drive Media Center but at times using a mouse is just faster.

• Do not use drop down menus (screenshot). They use drop down menus in their UI and I feel that the drop down navigation model is a model optimized for usage at 2′ and is inappropriate for 10′.
• Purchase requirements not bubbled up. If I search for an artist I get a search results page (screenshot)and from there I have to drill down to the artist page (screenshot), the album page (screenshot), and finally the track list track list (screenshot) before finding out that the album I want to listen to requires that I first pay for it. They really need to bubble up that purchase information to the artist page so I don’t have to drill down. Where ever they show an album cover they should show a little dollar sign in one of the lower corners of it if it requires you to pay for it.
• Make selecting all tracks and buying them the same cost as buying an album instead of more. This ties into the point above. You need to drill down to the tracks page to find out if you need to buy the album. If then on that page (screenshot) you do ‘Select All’ and then ‘Buy’ to purchase the album you are charged on a per track basis which often exceeds the cost of the album. So what you need to do is drill down to the all tracks view, see that it costs money, then backup to the album details page and click ‘Buy’ on that page (screenshot). This is hardly intuitive and instead if you select all for an album it should charge you the price of the album.
• Discogrpahy should have a discernable order (screenshot). You would expect the discogrpahy to be sorted by date, or at the very least alphabetically, but it turns out that it is sorted by popularity.
• Support triple tap for remote control text entry (screenshot). Instead of using the triple tap on screen keyboard that we make available in our SDK they use their own onscreen keyboard which requires lots of navigating around in order to input an artist/album/track.
• Music videos should surpress the ‘Finished overlay’ (screenshot). I really wanted to remove all the finished overlays in the product but we couldn’t get enough concensus to do it (though we will for a later release :) ). Still, doing some tricks, Napster can surpress the overlay, and they should since I do not think it offers any value to the user, and in fact is a bit confusing since a friendly file name is not displayed and you can’t delete streams.

While I am critical of Napster’s Media Center application I must say that I have it used it more than any of the other applications so it wins big points for providing a compelling experience and I urge you to check it out. Anecdotally, it sounds like the most popular Media Center application.

Update: Joe Wilcox in I’m Subscribed is bullish on Napster:

Half a day later and I’m quite excited about the service and the freedom free downloads give to experiment and try out more different kinds of music.

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ZDNET UK, Rupert Goodwins’ Diary:

Thus, all those carefully set up WMC boxes were reduced to playing back video. Or at least trying to - with loads of remote controls all set up for the same codes, it was more like a game of laser tag. Could you squeeze in a journalist-impressing burst of pre-recorded footie before the next-door stand switched your computer into a game of Reversi? (No.)

Perhaps now is a good time to leak the news that we will soon be releasing a TweakMCE power toy that enables geeks to tweak Media Center to their hearts content. I PM’d this bundle of goodness and we’re just waiting for some final pieces to come together (the right EULA, final graphics for the icons) before releasing it along with a few other power toys.

One of the many settings is ‘Set Remote Control ID’ which tells you how to reprogram your Media Center remote to send a unique identifier with each IR command and then the application tells Media Center to only respond to that ID. We need this because, by default, Media Center listens for all remote control IDs (1-7).

The feature is not compelling for end users because it is very unlikely they have two Media Centers in their living room but I think it will be a popular feature amongst the marketers who are on the road and are often in a remove full of Media Centers.

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Seattle PI, Microsoft Notebook: HP links up Apple, Windows Media Center:

The latest Media Center PCs from HP come with a special iTunes-related feature built into Microsoft’s new Windows XP Media Center Edition software. The computer maker created the feature, called HP Tunes, to let users of its Media Center PCs play songs and playlists from iTunes within the Windows Media Center interface, the special Microsoft software designed to be controlled using a remote while sitting back in a chair or couch in the living room.

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Pre-order XBOX Media Center Extender from Buy.com for $58.57.

If you have a Media Center this will allow you to ‘remote’ the Media Center experience to an XBOX enabling you to watch live tv, recorded tv, view photos, listen to music all via your XBOX.

Update: Check out Paul Thurrott’s review of Media Center Extenders (The XBOX Extender is a Media Center Extender):

Combined with a Media Center PC, a Media Center Extender is an excellent solution for enjoying your digital media content from anywhere in the house, especially if you can connect the two via wired networking.

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People in the blog world are up in arms that HBO will prevent fair use by disallowing copying of HBO content. In fact this has already happenened. In June 2004 HBO turned on CGMS-A which prevents you from (at least on Media Center) from burning HBO shows or playing them back on another machine (or even your same machine if you lose your license because you say reinstalled your OS).

Update 1: The Inquirer has a lengthy rant on this issue, Prepare to get screwed by digital rights management.

Update 2: Cory Doctorow, Why market-forces can’t correct DRM. Cory Doctorow also gave a well known talk on DRM at Microsoft.

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A USB HDTV OTA tuner.

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Charlie Owen is another eHome PM working on Media Center who is now blogging. I bet his focus is on the MCE SDK.

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Omar Shahine has a great blog post on PlaysForSure. And while he may be a Microsoft employee it doesn’t mean he has been drinking our koolaid:

First some background. I have owned every generation of the iPod. I am currently the owner of two 3G iPods.

Omar looks at the iPod world, then the PC world, then the PlaysForSure technology, logo program and devices. I like this quote:

Now before you get all excited and point out that Apple is doing this… you are right, they are. But it’s THEIR music store, and THEIR device and THEIR software.

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If you are building your own Media Center by buying the Media Center 2005 OEM kit you will also need to purchase decoders since they are not included. Fortunately, nVidia just posted their MCE 2005 DVD decoder for $19.95.

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Mark Cuban owner of HDNet writes on his blog about Movies that make a difference from Magnolia Pictures but more importantly he talks about the vision of his vertical integration and management of the content supply chain:

We also have the ability to sell, show and distribute them in whatever (DVD, HD, etc) format we think consumers want, rather than what Hollywood dictates . Our goal is to provide entertainment to consumers, how , where and when they want.

Mark, what I want is for you to distribute your content online.

I live in an apartment building which does not allow satellite dishes and has only one cable provider; a cable provider who does not support HD content (even though seven months ago when I signed up they said they were a month away from rolling it out). What I do have is a fast Internet connection, a big hard drive, and a Media Center hooked up to my HD display.

For instance, CinemaNow just started offering ‘on demand’ HD content (read their press release). You can even access their site and content through Media Center. However, HD content does not get it’s own category like it does at 2′ so it is harder to discover. Also, their collection is limited to 9 rather uninsipring IMAXy titles. Mark, this space is ripe for you to come and dominate!

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