Thanks!
Thanks for all the emails and comments! Maybe I shouldn’t be leaving after all :).
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Hi, I'm Matt Goyer. I used to work at Microsoft in the eHome division on the Windows Media Center team as a Program Manager.
Disclaimer: The posts on this weblog are provided 'AS IS' with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.
Sony VGP-XL1B2 DVD Changer
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No you shouldn’t ;-)
Strange how you were set to do a blog posting about HD-DVD in Vista Media Center, then the “HD-DVD in 64bit Vista only” story came out…then you promptly return from vacation and hand in your two week notice.
Anyway, good luck at Google.
That whole HD DVD 64 bit thing in Vista is false…
By reading through your previous blog postings, a pattern of diminished involvement regarding you and various features owned by you emerges…
Most of your posts up until the start of March were gung-ho and generally positive about Vista, and you seemed to enjoy writing about various DVD related tweaks in MCE. But during this time, the story of Sony possibly downsampling their HD-DVD’s for analog HDTV’s was gaining attention. Sony released a statement regarding the issue, which fueled discussions around DRM methods in the next-gen DVD’s, and the limitations they would impose.
Then on March 15, your post mentioned how one magazine had figured out that native HD-DVD playback in Vista might not be included at launch and might even require a third party app.
At the end of March, the entire e-home division is ejected from the Windows group and shoved into the Entertainment and Devices(?!) division. Biting your tongue, you refuse to comment on any possible benefits this “reorganiztion” could possibly have for you, Media Center, or e-home.
The next few weeks we see you defending various changes that reviewers were noticing in beta releases of Vista MC. A Scoble blog post towards the end of April regarding issues surrounding the internal structure at Microsoft elicits another tongue biting response from you spouting that public blogs aren’t the place to air those debates. Then you take a week off.
The month of May goes by with posts between you and MCE users trying to get various DVD changers to work. You defend the Emerald features decisions well. Another post in May has you mentioning a Toshiba laptop that is shipping with HD-DVD playback integrated into XP MCE, but strangely, you hadn’t even seen the setup, even though you would own a similiar feature in Vista MC.
June and the beginning of July bring a slew of posts with user questions about the new Vista MC interface, with you mainly explaining some of the choices made.
But by end of July, the questions start moving away from the Vista MC interface and towards the Vista MC feature set. Most of the answers seem like bad news to the users, and you unfairly begin to get the brunt of that disappointment. You even list all the new stuff Vista MC will bring, but by this time, I think you’ve already had either an HD-DVD streaming/managed-copy feature or some type of Movie Library type feature pulled from the Vista MC release. By this time, you’re either fed-up with the situation, or you’re getting there.
The end of July, start of August sees civility devolve even further on the MattG blog. More caveats of Vista MC come to light that users continue to take as bad news. “CableCard use in Vista MC requires a new PC purchase!” “Current extenders useless in Vista MC!” “DVD’s will not stream to extenders in Vista MC!” “Vista MC will not tune every DVB format in the world!” As one of only a handful of e-home employees that currently even blogs (Dave Fleischman still with the company??), you wind up taking more than your fair share of flak from the readers. You admirably list out answers to issues raised, although deferring a question about HD-DVD in Vista to the following week. That following week brings not the intended post, but instead a post that you’ll be taking a couple of weeks off, and the news that HD-DVD is no longer owned by you:
“I’ll be back in the office August 20. In the meantime spend some time on theGreenButton.com. And if you’re interested in HD DVD I hear that Peter (who I handed the feature off to) will be writing an article on it and posting it to The Media Center Sandbox.”
Hopefully you’ll give some clue about finding you in your post-MSFT days, the actual story behind the scenes will be interesting to hear.
And you thought you where just doing a bit of blogging in your spare time…. now you find out that when you decide to change jobs everything you have ever done and said is up for analysis :) !
Personally I change jobs every two or three years it keeps you fresh and on your toes… staying on a treadmill in the hope of promotion is for sheep… but nobody gives a damn when i do it :)
The very fact that deep down you know it is time to leave means it is…
Great plugin may be…