Thoughts on MCE beta feedback
I seem to be one of the few program managers on the Media Center team who reads our beta newsgroups on a daily basis and I must say that I find the experience to be just a little bit frustrating. While I’m tempted to respond to every post I’d like to clear up as much as I can in one blog post and see if I can get this weight off my chest by posting some thoughts here on the feedback we receive.
Build Quality
One thing I find frustrating is seeing you all struggle with the builds we deploy to you. I certainly know there’s problems with them, I install a new build at least every week at home; but I’m paid to install it. You’re not. You’re installing it because you love Media Center. So when I see you struggle with our bugs, bugs that prevent you from really testing the software I get frustrated that we can’t be dropping you better builds. Fortunately, every build gets better and better and a surprising number of you are very patient. Thanks for your patience and thanks for your continued participation. Every bug filed helps (even if we resolve it won’t fix/by design).
We did add new features!
I read over and over about how we haven’t actually added any new features to Media Center this time around and that there is no compelling reason to upgrade from Media Center 2005. Puzzled by this I decided to pull together a list of what’s changed (not an exhaustive list by any means, we still have a few key features hidden up our sleaves):
- Support for 64bit machines
- You can upgrade to Windows Vista Media Center from XP
- Media Center is included as part of two Windows Vista SKUs
- No need to buy a Media Center. You can install yourself.
- Domain join
- Available worldwide in every locale that we ship Windows to (160 new locales! 15 new languages!)
- More content on screen in our photos/music/videos/TV libraries
Faster perf for the music library - Digital Cable Tuner (formerly called OCUR) support
- It was very hard to use a mouse in MCE 2005. We’ve made some big improvements to mouse handling.
- Likewise, hard to use with a touch screen before, should be better now
- Run on your Tablet PC
- New start menu to get you to where you want to be faster
- Start photo slideshow from Music Now Playing
- Now playing item on the start menu, should be more discoverable
- More ways to slice and dice your music collection
- New music Now Playing
- Way better queue management
- View photos and videos by folder or date
- Mini TV guide
- TV favorites/most viewed
- TV categories is now discoverable
- TV guide is an overlay
- Easy to get to TV categories
- Thumbnails in recorded TV library
- PAL exhaustive channel scanning
- Microsoft DVD codec
- Native burning solution
- Extender platform. Now any hardware manufacturer can integrate a MCX into their TV, DVD player, etc.
- Tighter integration on start menu for third parties. You’re no longer buired in More Programs
- Windows Media Center Presentation Layer, now you can build apps that have the same fidelity as Media Center
- Windows Presentation Foundation, re-use your Avalon code to build Media Center applications
- Hotstart
If you look at that list I see lots of features that you’ve asked for over the years: 64 bit, native DVD codec, native burning, upgradability, retail availability, better development platform, etc.
Something not on that list that we’ve likely spent more time on than anything else is getting Media Center to integrate with the Vista codebase. It was a lot of work getting Media Center to work with Vista and all the changes to the things we’re dependent on like drivers, graphics infrastructure, sound infrastructure, networking, etc. We paid a very high development cost to become a part of the Windows Vista SKUs but you’re seeing the result in terms of worldwide distribution, retail availability, etc. And yes, sadly this meant we couldn’t do other things we wanted to do like a movies library, or more TV format support, or DVD playback on Extender. All this takes time and we only have some much time before we need to release and hard decisions had to be made. Understand that we want some of the features we cut just as much, and possibly more than you do (not surprisingly many of the developers here are very hard core Media Center fans).
Who is our target market?
You’re probably wondering why there are features that you want and that we want but aren’t included. For instance the biggest request I get as the DVD program manager is about why we don’t support streaming of DVDs in DVD changers to Extenders. What we as program managers do when we get a request for a new feature or a decision change request is step back and ask ourselves how many users this impacts. Media Center is used by millions of users and with Windows Vista will likely be used by tens of millions of users. Of those tens of millions of users how many are buying DVD changers? 10,000? 20,000? Is it worth investing weeks of dev, test, and usability time on a feature that will be used by 0.01% of our user base? Or should we spend more time working on building an Extender platform enabling any hardware manufacturer to build an Extender? Or should we spend more time striving for the highest DVD playback quality? I know many of you are unhappy with some of the decisions we’ve made but hopefully we’ve made a decision that is going to have the biggest impact for our large user base. Also rest assured that there will be another release of Media Center, this is not the last release! We’ll hopefully get to your favorite feature eventually. And if we don’t, brush up on those coding skills, after all, Media Center is a platform.
What can we do differently?
While I like to think we’re already pretty progressive in dropping builds on a pretty regular basis (how often does Tivo have large pubilc betas?) and open about what’s going on (for instance our participation in newsgroups, chats, blogging, etc.) we can still do a better job. The biggest area of improvement I see is growing the window of feedback. Currently once we drop a build there is very little time available for us to respond to your feedback. In the future I would like to see us drop builds early and often so that we have a bigger window of opportunity to incorporate your feedback.
I’d also like to see increased participation of my team members posting, blogging and providing more transparency about the decisions we make so that you can understand the options we had and the tradeoffs we made. Contrary to popular belief we don’t purposely try and make your lives difficult by designing complicated start menus :).
Conclusion
Hopefully you now have a sense of where we’re coming from and I’ll keep an open mind about where you’re coming from with your feedback.
Hi Matt,
Just a general note on selecting what features to focus on. You actually have the option to change what features your target will use and how they use them. You have already begun that step by introducing the Media Center. And this behavior will continue to change and if you’re not leading that change one of your competitors might be.
If I continue on your example of streaming DVDs. Certainly not many will buy extenders but more will have DVDs copied to their hard drives. Hard drive space is getting cheaper. Years ago people was still playing their music from their CDs. Thankfully some pioneering companies lead the way and made MP3 a household name. What if you couldn’t stream your music on your XBox extender? How useful would a media center really be? Not much more than an advanced DVR.
The problem is that if you don’t incorporate these features early adopters will grow tired and switch to competitor software who support these inevitable trend changes. And these 20% early adopters have ALOT of influence on what the remaining 80% end up using.
Now I know that the DVD example involves other complex issues such as copyright protection schemes but it makes my point which is applicable for other examples as well.
64-bit support is nice … but I am currently forced to install 32-bit builds because my eHome Wonder doesn’t have 64-bit drivers (not sure about my HDTV Wonder, since I just picked that card up).
I don’t see HD-DVD support on the list … is that simply because it’s an inherited “Vista” feature?
Agreed that there aren’t many DVD Changer owners and you shouldn’t spend much time on that.
But what the entire extender user base? How many extender owners would like *some* kind of DVD functionality? Probably near 100%? Be it streaming DVD’s, streaming ISO or VOB’s, streaming popular movie formats like Divx, or simply adding DVD functionality to the beatiful Xbox360 extender interface (not the dashboard). I think any one of these would be a worthy feature.
I’m a big fan of Vista. I’m using 5472 through my Xbox 360 and it’s been a positive experience. I’m impressed with the progress so far (after various experiences with earlier builds). That said, I’m also a geek who loves the technology and has always loved MCE. My wife, on the other hand, is intimidated by the plethora of options that have been added to the start menu (compared to MCE2005). Yes, functions are faster to access and maybe the “total clicks to perform function X” has dropped. But it’s now cumbersome and indimidating.
Question: Do you believe that the Start Menu needs seven links to the Online Spotlight or any links “Tune Network”? In my opinion it’s more functional and less innovative. There must be a better solution than having 22 menu options in the Start Menu (that’s how many I count currently). I don’t know, maybe you can enable the “clear” button for all of these items so that we can erase them ourselves.
Anyway, the Start Menu is one of my very few gripes regarding what I’ve seen in Vista. Largely I’m been very very happy with it. I like the new background and the styling of the new UI. Nice work and I know we’re all looking forward to seeing the finished product!
Full respect to you Matt, you do good work… however…
A lot of things on your feature list aren’t features, they are core functional components and cosmetic changes. i.e. is 64bit support a feature?? or just additional support for a particular type of hardware environment.
And things like tablet PC support are at odds with statements like “Is it worth investing weeks of dev, test, and usability time on a feature that will be used by 0.01% of our user base?”
The best use of a media center is hooked up to a lounge TV and operated with a remote… not a mouse. The lounge TV environment has to be the core design goal, sure people will get it bundled with a PC and sit at a desktop using it with a mouse… but that is a 2ft world and is not the intent.
From your list i would say that ‘Microsoft DVD codec’ and ‘Native burning solution’ are the two that made the most sense.
As for ‘More ways to slice and dice your music collection’ that is getting there, but you still can’t view the work of a single artist in chronological order! Yes you can view all albums by date but not an individual artists work, personally I think that is a misinterpretation of a frequently asked for feature.
Keep up the good work and buggy builds we will stick with you through the good times and the bad times until our hardrives crash :)
And finally for todays moan, the decision to ’simplify’ things by searching a folder for all media types leads to unexpected and unwanted results, like having album art in the pictures section etc etc. The old method of adding folders for each category of video, pic or music allowed for much more control of media discovery.
Ohhhh and Matt, don’t forget about all those killer features that you have already developed but switch off for the non-US markets… i.e. the Movie portal feature… why oh why oh why, ohh hum i guess we will just have to keep tricking media center to switch it on and suffer no cover art for movies in the guide or non region 1 DVDs!!!
Now fix those and write them on the new features list ;)
As much as I hate to admit it I don’t think DVD streaming would ever happen even if all your devs worked on it. There just doesn’t seem to be a fully legal way to handle DVD streaming, just ask Kaleidescape. Possibly by simply reading the disc and forwarding to an extender, however that isn’t what anyone wants. They want the ability to rip DVD’s and have a library, which just isn’t legal. Maybe DVD changers, but I doubt it. This feature set just wasn’t in the original spec, encryption wise.
However this is supposed to change with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray and managed copy, have you invested any dev time in that? At one point it was a touted feature, I would hate to see it gone as well.
There are two features you list above which I have feared would be at odds and I hope they aren’t. OCUR/CableCARD support vs. No need to buy a Media Center. You can install yourself. Will I be able to buy a cablecard reader off the shelf, a video card off the shelf and be able to view HD protected content? Further can I stream that protected HD content to an extender that doesn’t have a HDCP capable output such as a Xbox 360 (the most premium of extender)?
If you can’t do what a Series 3 TiVo can do out of the box I am affraid you are too little too late. Buying 2-3 Series 3 and being able to move content around will still be similar in price to a single MCE and a pair of HD capable extenders. All the other features are nice but those are the key features going forward.
All I want is an MCE that can recieve MPEG-4 DirecTV and stream to extenders all over the house. The ability to handle 3-4 tuners at once would be great too. If you can do that as well as Cablecard you can beat TiVo and get the market they are losing in the DirecTV area.
Oh one more thing, show CableCard in action and give some heavy technical details. I assure you that will buy you a ton of good will.
Matt Goyer addresses MCE Beta Feedback
Matt Goyer, Program Manager on the Windows Media Center Team, blogs his thoughts on the feedback from
Hi Matt
What I still miss is:
-DVB-S or even DVB-S2 support! I have no doubt that a lot of users are waiting for this.
-MCE is mainly targed for the US market. Why doesn’t MS care more about others? For example… change in IE the language to de-ch, move it at 1st place. Now check the online content in MCE….
-Internet Radio - simply add urls…
Christian
1. How about fixing MCE so i can have my pc starts and go
straight into MCE Vista with me ever loading the
Desktop…the way you gut do it now it’s slow and it
load after the desktop…2 painful
2. Why is MCE do sluggish after 2 days of standby….?
my system has 3ghz and 2mb ram
3. We want more robustness….better error handling..
I don’t want to be watching TV then pressing the Guide
and MCE UI disappairs
4. better TV quality…my $85.00 TV ook better that my
$2,500 PC.
Plz fix it MCE is the only way i consume my digital content.
Matt,
It’s nice to see a complete list of features and functions. And, altought I understand that all this features takes time and resources, thinks like native 64bit support, native burnning solution and native decoder doesn’t improve the software experience for current users.
Also, I do understand that a lot of work has been done in the underlying infra-structure. That was probably necessary as a foundation to growth and takes time and resources. But at the time Vista is launched, users will not necessarily have any beneficts from it.
It’s also very important to improve the Extender infrastructure. But those are also “under the hood” improvements. From a funcionality point of view, Extenders will not add that much to current Extender users, wich BTW will have to throw their current solutions away. We will still not be able to import media from the Exetnder, XBOX 360 doesn’t even play DVDs from the Extender Interface.
My major concern is that, from a functionality point of view, we have very little. All the UI “improvements” are relative, I was already able to record DVDs and CDs, I was already able to Watch DVD with 3rd party DVD decoders for example. On the other hand, I will still no be able to stream DVDs, not be able to watch TV on my other PC/Notebook/Origami, not be able to use PIP, not be able to add my own guide data and the list goes on and on. You guys know the list, we don’t need to keep repeating this, right?
We are not talking about the current MCE, we are talking about the MCE to be in 2007. People are complaining because the Vista to Be in 6 months or even further than that is lacking what people is asking for the last 2 years ! And now tha MCE is integrated with Vista, it’s hard to expect a MCE 2008 adressing those issues.
MCE should light the way of how a Media Center solution should be in the future. But the lack of functionality makes it, from a functionality perspective, a simple cosmetic update to MCE 2005, a 2 year old product that’s starting to show its age. And sorry, but a lifting is not enough.
Best regards, Julio
Forgot to tell. I really appreciate the progress from the latest builds, so much that Vista is already production in one of my 2 MCEs. Of coure there are problems, but it evolved in a way you guys would no be able to do in the last 2 months, and I decided to that in appreciation and recognition. Congratulations, really, it was remarkable.
And I hope you can be a tall guy, so you can have big sleaves. ;)
I find it very funny that you skirt DVD playback on extenders with the scarcity of DVD changers. True there are copyright issues there, none of which I’m sure M$ can’t get past. I can stream music, tv, and video files from my MCE box to my Xbox 360. Why the hell can I not stream DVDs!
When is there going to be a solution for someone who owns more than one media center PC? I have multiple PCs that I would love to use as slave media center PCs or media center extenders. Will this be feasible in the future?
I notice a lot of people who really want Divx/Xvid playback with the Xbox as the MCX. Are you guys working on this?
Several people have mentioned it, but it bears restating for emphasis: The most critical feature for MCE is OCUR/CableCARD support.
For MCE, the goal has to be to capture the main TV in the house, not only in the den. To win the living room, you must defeat the STB. Unless, there is the capability to quickly turn channels and record HDTV content (premium or otherwise), MCE doesn’t stand a chance. However, if MCE is successful, all other features will experience derivative benefit.
Acceptance of HDTV is coming to a tipping point, with people purchasing HDTVs like crazy and networks switching to HDTV content. Once someone has started using a rented STB or worse, purchased one, the impetus to switch to MCE will be gone.
I have yet to see any demonstration or even a good discussion of this feature. Whereas, I have been hearing a lot of noise about the death of the CableCARD.
I highly recommend that this feature get more prominence and exposure as soon as possible.
Ted
What about recording AM/FM radio and playing it back later? If a program guide isn’t available, how about a user config timer? Record for x time on y channel on z day. I know people whine that it’s not legal but if we can record tv, why not radio?
I’m afraid the vast majority of the features you list are either not relevant to me in the UK or not that important to me in the way I use MCE. Speeding up the music libabry will be good, I’m not sure anything else there is to get excited about.
I’d re-iterate what’s been said above, the two main big features missing from MCE is that ability to have a central ripped DVD library (which is no more illegal than a ripped music library, at least in the UK), and two MCE/Vista PCs on a home network co-operating with each other.
These I would pay to upgrade for. Nothing on that current list will have me changing my stable MCE 2005 system for Vista in a hurry.
I’ve owned/rented a Tivo, Ultimate TV and a Motorola Cable DVR… MCE is the best UI for a DVR I’ve encountered and I love the fact that I can have all my content in one box (in the office with the small XBOX 360 for the living room).
Cablecard is the #1 feature in my book for Vist MCE. I want HD cable/sat on MCE.
I am scared by the cable companies current anti-cablecard stance because it cuts off their on-demand revenue streams. I hope cablelabs is working (quickly) on getting 2 way up and running. If you have any pull with those folks, give em a yank. I work with a few marketing folks from the cable companies in a retail environment and they all knock cablecard.
I look forward to DirecTV native tuners. I hope to see 2 way cablecard close behind. That’s my high priority wish list for MCE.
I like Vista MCE. I like the new main menu, a lot. My only initial complaint with the new UI was that I did not like the thumbnails in the video sections due to the slowdown they caused and the fact that I can see more info when it is organized using text lists. However on the latest winsupersite review of vista MCE Paul brought up an interesting point… his children much preferred the thumbnail views. Makes a lot of sense… but I do wish there was a good way to do text lists within the galleries, the text within a square box (that you see for example when a music file doesn’t have album art) isn’t polished like the rest of the UI.
[…] In response, Matt posted a long list of features that help illustrate why MCE Vista is a vast improvement over MCE 2005. In my opinion the list is embarrassing, and — if this is interpreted as a litmus test for how “in touch” Microsoft is with MCE users — does not bode well for the future of MCE. […]
nice work Matt, but what about tvguide for Australia ? Is it ever gonna happen ???
When will MCE support a video playlist. Lot of us have music videos and other short clips. With mce you have to play the files one by one. Another feature would be the ability to have two different lineups like cable and satellite at the sametime (I get my locals thru cable and international from satellite)
Just to add another voice to the importance of CableCARD support. It’s definately critical to the future success of MCE and to a wider degree Microsoft in the Digital Home.
Additionally, as someone mentioned above, The availability of OCUR/CableCARD Tuners/Adapters to general public, or the lack there of, is very murky. Many people have expressed a similar desire for clarification on this point, and it seems as though no one with the inside scoop is willing to talk about it.
I would very much like to beable to roll my own VistaMCE system complete with CableCARD Tuners. But if I’m required to buy some prebunit from Dell, HP, Sony, or etc, I may not like that option but I’m willing to go that route. I’d just like to know ahead of time.
Are OCUR/CableCARD Tuners/Adapters going to be available as an addon peripheral through retail channels or not?
Thanks for publishing the definitive list - that’s something I can refer to when I ultimately support this on the public newsgroup.
There’s one thing that hasn’t been mentioned but I see it all the time on the newsgroup…we really need the ability to have multiple video feeds. We can have multiple tuners now (up to 4 analog ones via a hack), but all of them have to have the same input. Yet lots of people have both a cable and a satellite feed.
And even more want the ability to easily switch between cable and video input, for recording VHS tapes or things like security cameras. Heck, Matt, every TV in existence makes it dead simple to switch between cable/antenna and video inputs…why is it so darn time consuming in Media Center?
We’ve been told repeatedly that the architecture prevents this. Well, isn’t it about time to redesign the architecture to allow it? Fred Brooks told us decades ago to “Build the first one to throw away” (The Mythical Man Month). It’s time to throw away that first (much enhanced) version and (knowing what you know now) build it again from scratch. You know you want to…
- Video playlists?
- Support for anywahere else other than America (through your weight around a bit you are in cahoots with Channel Nine over here in Australia (through ninemsn) and your partner is sueing the only real EPG option we have.
- Fix online spotlight and offer some content for anywhere else but australia.
- The buried in more programs hasn’t been an issue for 18 months, thanks to MCE Customizer, hardly an improvement.
- Mini TV guide? we would like a TV guide first in Australia.
I second (or third or fourth) the Video Playlists! This would be a vital feature for those of us who queue up videos for our kids.
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the large list of features. It’s certainly informative and gives me a much greater appreciation of what you guys are doing.
I agree with many of the previous commenters. The two bigest features for me would be:
a) support for some type of media center networking. The ability to connect a number of mce pc’s into a castle and have a central location for recorded tv shows, tuners etc. Thurrot mentioned solftsled a while ago. That would be great.
b) The ability to rip dvd’s and watch them on any of my softsled enabled pc’s. everyone talks about how great my movies is, its still available, no apparent legal issues. Why can MS build the functionality into vista.
As I live in canada, OCUR means nothing to me. OTA HD Support in canada would be much appreciated.
What I like about vista MCE.
a) new navigation menu
b) ms dvd decoder
c) better utilitization of 16:9 screens
d) better and faster library browsing
e) cool guide overlay
The bottom line is, most people reading this blog love their mce 2005 pc’s and will be buying vista mce as soon as it is released.
Me again.
If you don’t get CableCARD working in the US (then Canada, then elsewhere), then MCE just won’t have the critical mass it needs for:
(a) MCE to MCE interfacing
(b) DVD ripping/watching on extenders
(c) Video playlists
(d) IPTV tuner
(e) Home Automation
(f) …
We’re talking about at least a magnitude difference between number installed PCs in the living room (with CableCARD) and without. If successful, it’s MCE is worked into TVs, if not, STBs are.
Ted
That aint a list of new features…. and anything really listed there is only for the US market like cablecard - who cares about this in the real world… You say its for 150+ regions - well outside of the good old USA - its crap…. How about proper dvb-t support mixed with analogue and dvb-s and lets not forget about commonly used things like videotext and titles for the hearing impaired - I reckon MS should be sued for not releasing a product that can not be fully utilised or used by the disabled ! And the UI still sucks - Im looking for a recording from last Tuesday - was that the 25th or 26th… ummmm… damn wrong item - people are watching tv and they dont need to think and do date calcs…. and simply I think the beta testers are tired of raising bugs for them to be closed with comments of ‘thats the way it works - not to be fixed’….
In Australia as was mentioned by someone else the really need the guide, who cares about a mini guide when we don’t have one at all other than a 3rd party plug in for purchase and this is free to air only.
The second really important thing is tuner and tuning support. We have dvb-t free to air digital TV and cable/sat pay TV provided by STBs provided by the supplier. The free to air channels are not retransmitted by the pay TV providers. To get around this we need to have the option for an analogue tuner to control the pay TV STB while the dvb-t antenna based free to air digital tuners work together with the separate tuners, tuning and guide info. We basically need the ability to assign channels and tuning options to different tuners.
The final thing that would be even better for the pay TV scenario would be the ability to have a native pay
TV support, this would involve lots of work with the local Australian cable/sat pay TV providers, now that you have managed this in the US maybe it will be possible here.
The final thing that would be useful is what other people have been listing here is the multiple mce integration, maybe some sort of super guide to control the recording of all shows on multiple mce machines, the ability to move recoreded tv to a mce server and the ability to playback any of the content anywhere via any mce machine or extender.
Other things I would like is DVD playback on xbox360 in the MCE interface rather than through the dashboard.
Other codec support on Xbox 360, divx/xvid and mpeg2, this can be used by people who rip their dvds or by people who put their own home made dvds on their hard drives in my videos.
Matt if you or someone in your team or someone is Australia would like to talk about any of this in detail I would be happy to email to discuss.
Anthony
CableCARD is nice, but there is another standard outside US.
MCE is lacking support for DVBS, DVBC and the protection system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVB
Why don’t you offer support for more than 2 HDTV cards? Obviously you need to allow for people to record two shows and watch another… it’s a rather obvious evolution. Isn’t it?
And another Aussie here wanting some sort of TV-Guide.
[…] Some of the highlights include a Microsoft DVD codec (no need to go 3rd party), CableCARD support and 64bit compatibility. Matt’s full post, including other features and thoughts, can be found here. […]
Matt, what is the record number of comments for one of your blog entries? :)
At least we are passionate about this little Media Center idea that Microsoft has had ;)
Matt,
I think Microsoft should look at whats ’standard’ now in the HTPC market. If you for example look at SageTv, Sceneo, MediaPortal, GbPvr etc.. then you will see that all those applications are much advanced today then MCE Vista will be in 2007.
Cable card is nice, but only usefull if you are living in the US. The rest of the world is using DVB-C/T/S and i find it unbelievable that Vista MCE wont support DVB-C/T/S with CI/CAM support ??
Other things i’ll be missing and can be found in almost every other HTPC application:
- skinning. Allow users to change the entire look of MCE
- customizable views. If i want a view to show me all songs from U2 during the years 1980-1999 then i should be able to simply add it
- commercial skipping
- recording and timeshifting to MPEG-2, MPEG-4 or DIVX/XVID instead of dvr-ms
- seperate the frontend (GUI) from the backend pls. I want a MCE server somewhere in the house which does the recording/timeshifting etc and several frontends in the living room, sleeping room etc. I know this is possible with a xbox 360, but why can’t i use a windows pc as frontend ??
- my video’s. There is a terrific plugin for MCE 2005, but why isnt this standard in MCE? including video playlists???
- Multi-tuner support instead of dual. Tv cards are cheap now a days. Why limit it to 2 when you could easily have 4 tuners. Offcourse allow a mix of tuners so for example 2 analog, 2 DVB-S and 1 cable card all controlled by MCE
- Aspect ratio control. Choosing between 4:3, 14:9 , 16:9 or user defined
- Transcoding recordings to any other format (like divx)
- radio timeshifting/recording
- intelligent recording. Pay notice to what the user likes to watch/record and automaticly record shows based on his behaviour
- more control for developers to replace/extend any part of MCE
Not being able to stream ripped DVDs to another TV via an extender is a major downfall of this product. And just making it possible *without* also enabling DD/DTS audio streams and anamorphic video at the same time would be worthless. I know not everyone has 16×9 televisions, but more and more are getting them. I have two and would LOVE to be able to watch my ripped movies that reside on my MCE box in my living room from the comfort of my bed.
Make it happen and you’ll sell more Xbox 360s. )I know you’ll sell at least one more….)
Will it be possible to disable the “delete” option in Vista MCE? This is something that really annoy me in MCE05 since I don’t want to have parts of my media collection deleted by meddling kids, drunk party guests, or computer-illiterate relatives.
Please take care that Europe and its DVB-S and DBB-C standards are not forgotten! I also would like you see HD TV in MCE but it won’t happen again.
And then, MS invented Mpeg4 and VC-1, why the hell can’t I stream this or Divx or h264 to my xbox 360?
Those are the really missing features…
[…] I’m a little surprised by the attention my post titled, Thoughts on MCE beta feedback, received. It was picked up by TechMeme, Gizmodo, eHomeUpgrade and a bunch of other MCE/Vista blogs. What’s most surprising to me is that I really just read the Windows Vista Beta 2 Product Guide and put all that enough into a bulleted list :). But really, it’s great to see some much excitement about Windows Vista (and some disappointment about what we’re not doing :P). […]
What your not doing….. = thats easy - your pushing a US centric product onto the world without realising or caring too much about localisation / expectations… Who decides functionality - developers? Who sets the business requirements - those living in the US, where is the internationalisation group… MS needs to look outside the US borders and look in the local markets of the problems / features that are required in each region and place these in the high priority queue to get analysed and fixed quickly… otherwise it would be best to just remove the product from the market regions where your just not seriously considering addressing the modest simple requirements. Im talking making it a full fledged functional system that operates in Europe / Asia / Australia - not something that is just a cablecard US centric piece of software.
[…] Microsoft Vista’s enhancements over XP MCE. (Matt Goyer) […]
Yardman,
Look in the Registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
Shell value. If you point this to ehshell.exe, no Desktop, straight into MCE (at least in MCE 2005). Haven’t tried it on Vista, yet.
Matt,
I’ve been using MCE2005 with Xbox360 extender for a few months now, converting from my cable companies MOXI DVR. MCE with 360 extender is much better.
Are there any plans to add the ability to access the internet via extenders and wireless keyboards?
Many times I’m watching something and want to know more about the subject, it would be great to have the ability to open an IE window on the TV to do a quick search.
Thanks,
Andrew
Hi Matt,
just wanted to keep MSFT’s eHome Division up to date: word spread today in Germany, that most of germany’s free DVB-S channels will be scrambled sometime durng Q1 2007. The system used is called Dolphin and is being developed by SES Astra (europe’s #1 digital satellite network). this system kinda reminds me of OCUR or CableCard, requiring a CI- and CAM interface along a smartcard to descramble the tv content… when developing for native DVB-S/DVB-S2 support in MCE, please keep this as a reminder that pay-TV decoding will be a reqierment, not a feature.
Greets, DAULSTA
“No need to buy a Media Center. You can install yourself.”
So what you’re telling us is, that after all this time of not “technically” being able to get MCE without buying a new pc with the software pre-installed, we can now buy the OS for installation ourselves but not if we want CableCard support because the only way to get that feature is to buy a special pc with it installed. You have got to be kidding me! I understand that this is not a Microsoft fault for the most part, but come on. Unless there is some fancy, hidden piece of hardware being added to each of the approved CableCard machines anything they can build the rest of us can build. It makes no sense!
The list of ‘features’ for Vista MCE includes a few (very few!) useful new features some of which I had forgotten about (shows you how important I consider them). However the sad reality is that from an International point of view the list of MISSING features is probably LONGER than your list of new features.
Everybody (possibly literally!) has been asking for the ability to use a PC as an extender. Even Americans have been asking for this!
Support for DVB-S
Support for DVB-S2
Support for DVB-C
Support for CAMs (to decrypt subscription TV) this applies to DVB-T, DVB-S, DVB-S2, DVB-C
MHEG5 for Interactive TV
DVB subtitles
DAB Radio support
Digital Radio Mondail
MPEG4 for live TV
MPEG4 for recording
MPEG4 for streaming (to an extender)
MPEG4 for HD-DVD
MPEG4 for BluRay
Ability to mix more than one EPG
EPG in more countries
Better quality EPG data outside USA (not better than, but as good as)
Remote Record outside USA
Movie Portal feature outside USA
and probably many others I have forgotten over the time [years] I and others have been waiting.
Note: 99% of HDTV in Europe is in MPEG4 H.264 (aka. MPEG4 AVC), this applies to HDTV that is already available and will also apply to new channels. Currently MCE 2005 _AND_ Vista MCE have nadda, zip, diddly squat support for MPEG4.
Nothing on your list would justify paying for an upgrade to Vista, hell nothing on your list would justify a FREE upgrade to Vista MCE if you already have a working and stable MCE 2005.
There is a very dim light at the end of the tunnel, that might indicate there will finally be some real progress (from the point of view of International customers).
This blog http://jtsang.blogspot.com/2006/06/preparing-for-tv-beyond-windows-vista.html links to a PowerPoint presentation http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/b/9/5b97017b-e28a-4bae-ba48-174cf47d23cd/MED076a_WH06.ppt that was shown at WinHEC 2006
This presentation at least shows Microsoft are aware of how pathetic their current support for International markets is.
This presentation implies it would ship in 2007 in that some slides have titles like “Key TV features ‘07″. Anyone who believes that sort of time scale obviously also believes in the tooth fairy and that Vista will ship on time!
Unfortunately the entire PowerPoint file does not mention MPEG4 once, this is very worrying as I have indicated above, MPEG4 AVC/H.264 is critical to providing HDTV support. It is also puzzling since it DOES mention support for DVB-S2 which is being used in Europe to transmit HDTV in MPEG4 format.
Can you comment on this presentation Matt?
[…] Continuing on the theme of being honest with your customers, Charles Wiltgen has a smackdown of a post in response to Matt Goyer’s post in defense of MCE Vista’s current state of development and near final feature set. Matt’s article is a nice snapshot of how Vista is affecting the products around it. […]
Thanks for the info.
Can you tell me if Vista improves on the tuning algorithms. MCE2005 has real issues with UK DVB-T and find 3 entries per frequency/channel. It’s currentlynot smart enough to know that these are all the same and makes 3 entries in the channels listing which is a ngihtmare to manage.
Does Vista correct this?
Thanks…
I actually feel sorry for the Microsoft crew that are involved in Vista, mainly because no matter what they do it will never be enough, nor will it satisfy everyone from all regions.
Regarding Australia, get off Microsoft’s back re the EPG. It is the FTA channels that will not allow their EPG data that is happily provided to websites and printed publications through HWA, to be made available to Microsoft for a free EPG service as is the case in many other countries. Pay $3 per week and support IceTV, or would you rather see the Packers kill them off too?
My wishlist would go as follows;
1 - reinstate SoftSled, so we can extend the media center experience to other PC’s running XP in the Digital Home. An XBOX360 is not really appropriate in the home office…
2 - roll the DVB-T support into the code that provides ATSC support in the US. This would enable the FTA digital and Cable/Satelite support (via analog tuners) to work concurrently, which is THE BIGGEST issue in the Australian market.
3 - Add video playlists so the worlds parents can line up numerous wiggles episodes and keep the kids amused.
4 - enabling copyright infringement via DVD archiving and streaming would be nice, but the reality is that there are third party applications to do this, so it doesnt really matter…
Kev
PS locking in on a firm release date would also be good!!!
Thanks for all of your hard work Matt.
The one feature that I really miss is DVD Streaming. The biggest argument for this is kids!!! Give a leave a kid with a DVD and give it 5 minutes before it cannot be read anymore! I make backups of DVD’s I own so they cannot scratch them. Surely this is legal for DVD’s you own the media for and I am sure that about 90% of people who use Media Center will have kids!
Currently I use Transcode 360 and which allows me to play my ISO backups (Film only), though it still isn’t the same as having menus with chapter select etc.
Once again keep up the good work.
“Of those tens of millions of users how many are buying DVD changers? 10,000? 20,000? Is it worth investing weeks of dev, test, and usability time on a feature that will be used by 0.01% of our user base?”
I think one word understood by just about all softies can explain why that feature should ahve been a MUST.
Towels.
Missing features:
1. Use of PCs as extenders (Softsled).
2. Native support for DivX/Xvid/H.264 (on extenders).
Ad 1. This will increase the number of MCE units sold/deployed. I would like to put a media center server away in the basement, and the have a Xbox 360 in my living room and a small PC (e.g. the size of a Mac Mini) in my office capable of viewing the media (music, video AND TV) available on the server.
Ad 2. It is illogical that videos that play nicely on a MCE PC don’t play on extenders. Technically advanced people may understand this, however, if you want the concept of MCE PCs and MCXs to catch on with the broader public such irregulaties need to be adressed.
These two missing features is requested over and over again in user forums and in this tread as well!
UK MCE 2005 User here.
I cannot see a compelling reason to upgrade to vista.
Out primary source of digital TV in the UK is Sky (Satellite).
Obviously, at the moment, we have to link the Sky STB to the media center and configure the media center to use the box. - This results in poor video quality, compared to connecting the STB directly to the TV.
BskyB is one of the biggest names in the entertainment world, and will only continue to get bigger. Surely MS can negotiate a deal with BskyB to offer native Sky support? (Technotrend already have the Hardware that can do this, except it is lacking a CI / CAM, and of course MCE does not support it.)
And another, VERY SIMPLE thing that is missing from MCE that is present in even the simplest low-end STB’s is the ability to set a reminder for a programme that is coming on.
I do nto necessarily want it recorded, but it would be nice to be able to have a reminder pop up on screen to tell me it is due on.
Doesn’t sound too difficult does it?
Marc Goodner,
How did you get Transcode 360 to play ISO files? They will play on my computer in Windows Media Center 2005, but will not play on my Xbox 360 in media Center.
Sorry my question was for phillj. Thanks
Do anyone know if EPG data is currently being provided for Canada, and if so what cities/regions?
Everytime I enter a postal code in Ottawa I get unknown error 14.
EPG is available in Canada. Works very well. Try a different postal code near by.
ATSC (HDTV) should be available in Canada, don’t know why it isn’t. I’ve been running OTA ATSC for the past several month and I’m hooked on the quality. Come on Microsoft, unlock it so it works in Canada without having to mod the registry. No reason not to make it work, it already does.
[…] I use Microsoft Media Center 2005 and have been using it on my HTPC since I seriously started using it. After nearly two years of use, I still can’t imagine anything better, but wait maybe it’s here. As you properly already know, Microsoft Windows Vista is on it’s way and brings with it a new Media Center edition. But is MCE05 (Media Center Edition 2005) better than MCEV (Media Center Edition Vista)? I don’t know if it is better, as I haven’t tried it yet, but I found a blog from Matt Goyer (a former MS employee) who lists the new things in MCEV over MCE05, informative reading. […]
I too cannot live without a “media center” box in my living room. It has completely replaced all other players (DVD and VCR). It stores all my household’s digital content, and seconds as a server when I need it.
Several items are preventing my from upgrading to Vista:
1. No digital cable support without purchasing a whole new machine from a large OEM using OCUR. Furthermore, there is no unencrypted digital cable support for local digital/HD stations. ATSC over-the-air isn’t the answer for many potential customers.
1a. I’ll also voice a concern for my international friends. Very little seems to have improved for them.
2. No native HD-DVD / Blueray support or playback. In fact, the overall “high-definition” story is extremely murky. Very little has been officially said about exactly what a customer needs to build a “full-fidelity-output” machine.
3. No DVD library support. I’m talking about the honest person who wants to rip their DVDs that they purchased legally to a server, for private household use.
4. I like the new UI, but I do not like how it searches and catalogs media. MCE 2005 had a much more predictable model.
DVB-Subtitles
I bought Vista Home Premium a couple of weeks ago to use its MCE on a media PC. However it turns out that it doesn’t support DVB-Subtitles. That makes it useless for digital TV in Denmark and most of Europe.
I’m now considering changing to a Linux based media center, that has support for DVB-Subtitles.
Is this blog dead??
6 Month Vista MCE Report Card…
var sbtitle6260=encodeURIComponent(”6 Month Vista MCE Report Card”); var sburl6260=decodeURI(”http://www.missingremote.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1925″);……
An upgrade from MCE2k5 to Vista Premium is more of a downgrade (You loose remote desktop access and other advanced features)
In XP MCE videos are just folders in the registry, now they are a part of the WMP library, this is a horrible solution if you have many computers with shared folders that you want to access on the Media Center pc. The layout of the video “pages” are horrible aswell, the old MCE would display the filname under the preview, and that is gone (Imagine a full season of tv shows ripped from dvd and all previews show the same studio logo, useless) MS just assumes that everyone is happy with the WMP library and give no other options.
Switching to (and back from) the “category” view in the tv guide was better on MCE
I also forgot, you can join a domai