After reading Chris’s post about us ignoring small OEM and system builders and all the comments on my response I was worried that maybe we had screwed up and had not properly disclosed the information. To fully understand the situation I sat down today with the eHome program manager who represents the system builders.
What I learned confirmed that the information I provided to our team on DVD changer support in MCE 2005 UR2 was included in both the OPK documentation (page 30 of the Preinstallation Guide Addendum for UR2) and in our hardware requirements document (section 1.11.1.6 on page 21). I distinctly remember sitting in on the meeting about the hardware requirements document, spent time modifying several different versions of the OPK document, and sent off a copy of my spec (titled Multidisc Changer Support) to our editor. All three of these documents about DVD changers were released to ‘Beta Place’ for UR2 beta 2. Many different people had access to this information: OEMs, software vendors, hardware vendors and select system builders. For system builders who didn’t have access to this information it was made available through the more generic Microsoft system builder channel. Nearly everyone had equal access to this information prior to launch. And this information is still available today through the system builder site. If you, a system builder, were to make queries to the support people who run our system builder channel about DVD changers it would make it back to me. To date I have only received queries about changer support from Sony, PowerFile and Niveus. If you were to query me I would point you in PowerFile’s direction if you didn’t want to build your own hardware and write your own driver (you still might have to write your driver if you go with PowerFile).
To be clear, the documentation I provided was sparse. It is in fact less information then was included in my post. I did not write a white paper or any other similar document on DVD changer support. Large OEMs got just as much information, in fact, just as little information as a system builder, and they received it at the same time you did. Yes, I could have provided more information, but really what has been released is all you need to build your own changer. If you do a deal with PowerFile for your hardware all you need to know is that the device is plug and play. The feature is that simple!
Going forward, you can feel free to contact me directly about DVD changer support. Alternatively representatives from PowerFile have posted their information in my blog comments. Feel free to contact them for information on their hardware and their pricing.
I also heard some comments about a similar lack of information disclosure for Away Mode. What I learned is that if you have the correct mother board (as documented in the OPK doc) and you use the drivers included on the OPK disc it will work. I personally am not really excited about Away Mode and don’t know what the fuss is about.
As for CableCARD disclosure, this is something I can’t comment on, but expect more announcements from us shortly.
In conclusion, I feel we did ensure adaquate information disclosure about UR2 features. However, I understand that a lot of information is available through the system builder channel and that it may be hard to find what you’re looking for. If that’s what happened to you, I’m sorry you didn’t find the DVD changer information. Also understand that we want the system channel builder to be successful. We want to sell more copies of Windows and get PCs into more living rooms and the system builder channel is an opportunity channel for us to accomplish that through, so let’s work together to make that channel successful.
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