Further muddy waters for Media Center

6 Jan 2007

Supposedly Microsoft is unveiling a new Windows Home Server edition at CES that will be a home storage, automation and security solution. If I am understanding this correct, this continues the downward spiral that is my understanding of the Microsoft Home strategy.

I am definitely a fan of centralized storage, but isn’t that what the current model utilizes the Media Center PC for? If this is correct, now we will have a Windows Media Center desktop (or laptop) PC that we find all of our content with, a Windows Home Server PC that we store all of our content on, and an Xbox 360 Media Center extender that we view our content with.

Now I will admit to having more PCs than one should in my home. All together there are two Media Center PCs, three Windows XP notebooks (Two are work machines of Dawn and mine) a Windows Vista notebook, two Fedora Linux machines and a Powermac. That’s a lot of hardware, I know. But the average user isn’t going to have that much silicon around. I always kind of assumed that you use a centralized Media Center desktop as a streaming storage solution to an Extender (or Xbox 360 for that purpose. That’s the model that I understand from Microsoft. Then the abilities of the extenders were limited to only browsing photos, music and videos.

What exactly is my wireless Media Center keyboard for? According to the site it says, “Control your media from the comfort of your couch.” So then this PC does belong in the living room? I assume so since it came with a remote too. I won’t even begin the whole “I can’t connect both to my TV at once.” crap. So if this product materializes we have a triangle of products.

Here is the only way I can really see this solution practical. Let’s say Dawn, Andy and I all have our own Media Center PCs. I am downloading tunes, Dawn is working on her photos, and Andy is downloading Spongebob episodes (legally of course!) Since you can only connect a Media Center Extender to one PC, this would allow multiple content gatherers to stream content to one central location that can server multiple Media Extenders. So now we all have a PC and monitor, we all have an extender and TV, and one PC to rule them all. Good grief.

I am definitely excited about the home automation and security options, and I hope they include some sort of home VPN type connectivity, leave it to Microsoft to add a Microsoft Home Live! thing that would allow you to access home data, web cams, security systems and maybe even communication, that would truly be sweet.

We all are waiting to see what this is, the article I read about this in says Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet kicked off this speculation, I will surely be reading her blog to see what she finds out.

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