Every bad decision has a good reason behind it…
We, eHome, seem to be taking some flak in the comments here for what’s not included in Windows Vista. This reminded me of this post by Dare (and the original one by Scoble), Every Bad Decision Has a Good Reason Behind It.
For example, one thing I’ve noticed about internal mailing lists is that there are always people who seem to assume that they are smarter and more knowledgeable about a product or technology than the people who actually work on the product. You can tell these people by the way they point out obvious features that are missing in the product and berate the team for not having them.
Please remember that what you see as ‘bad decisions’ are likely not bad decisions if you saw the big picture. Of course to see that big picture you’d need to cross the fence and join eHome as an employee :). I’m not saying that we don’t make bad decisions, we certainly do (I know I’ve made one or two that made it into the product…).
Go on Matt tell us about the bad decisions that you personally where responsible for :) Or do you fear the wrath of the user community… or more likely the wife! ;)
Well - I am near to the conclusion that it isen’t the decitions taken of the eHome team that is the most obvious, it’s actually the decitions that aren’t taken.
I can’t say how disappointed I am in MSFT eHome put so much effort into supporting US cablecard, and they did not decide to use just a bit of the time to support DVB-C, DVB-S and DVB-S2 in Europe, although it’s very near the same as DVB-T which is already supported.
Generally a missing decition such as this means that Vista Media Center is useless in most homes in Europe. It’s a fact that the analogue tuners available is of a week quality compared to internal tuners in TV’s (which is why CableCard was so important), and because of this, people in Europe won’t have any use of Media Center. Atleast for now, Media Center’s audience isen’t they people who can’t see if a bird is a bird, or if it’s a dog on their TV sets, and does not care about it, it’s the people that requests a quality TV picture.
All the talk about which countries Media Center is released in is actually very unimportant, due to it’s missing ability to support the most important, the most obvious, and the stuff required the most!
What does a new look, new features and all of these things mean if the general product just does not compete because of these things.
So, all in all, it’s the missing decitions to support the countries that Media Center is released in that is the main problem, not the bad decitions that are taken.
This would be my priority list:
1. Support the used TV technologies used in the countries the program is released in, and make this top priority. Consumers will always wan’t the best quality TV available to them, and if Media Center can’t handle it, Media Center isen’t used.
2. Make sure that you can mix the technologies, like in countries where you have main channels in digital like DVB-T, and all other channels in analog.
3. Support the encryption standard that is already available via. CAM’s, for services such as DVB-T, DVB-S and DVB-C.
4. Focus on a quality TV guide, not just in the US, but in all locations (Any Australians?).
5. Introduce new features only if they can make it to the general audience, and focus on getting them out generally (TV movie guide, My DVD’s, anyone?).
6. Make sure that the general functionalities of the units Media Center should replace is always as good as the functionalites in stand-alone products, to make sure there is no use for stand-alone products. Radio is an example, what about storing stations with names, supporting RDS services (Radio Data System), there must be something similar in US to support also? Another example is european TeleText, which is supported, but all TV sets today has full page memory, and with a computer, that should be pretty easy to do to.
7. Don’t rely on third parties for vital functionality (DVD Decoders, DVD Burning, ect.). Vista fixes the DVD Decoder, good. There is simply to much risc of failures between versions, ect, and, the System Builders can’t always handle it either.
Now - after all these things are going well, THEN make new features, THEN totally redesign the UI as done in Vista (What was wrong with the old one? Were you just getting bored?).
As a last point I totally agree on the SDK enchancements in Vista, because when the eHome team has made sure that all the important things are top quality, then third parties will be sure to deliver additional features, and when the SDK quality is good, these add-on features will also be.
I am sorry guys, I know that these things properly aren’t as fun as doing a (useless?) messenger client, that gets pulled anyway (wonder who decided that instant messaging with a remote would be the new awesome thing that everyone would want?), but it can’t all be fun, can it? Well, perhaps it can, but remember who you are developing these things for.
Besides that, if instant messaging, e-mail or any of these things ever should be interesting from a Media Center, be sure to license T9 text entry functionality, and open it up in the SDK for third parties to deliver functionality based on it (and not in an ever crashing ActiveX this time, promise? ;-)).
Sorry that this comment does not sound very positive - I know, but I hope you can take the good with the bad, Media Center is a GREAT product, forget what some people say, but the eHome team also need to understand that you got to start from the bottom, and make sure that the base is as good as it can get before focusing on all the other things.
Regards,
Brian Binnerup
Of course folks are right — sometimes we *do* make bad decisions. It’s inherent in any product. Keep the comments coming folks — even if you want to call us idiots — at the end of the day it’s great feedback.