Microsoft TV appeared at CES, but as best we could tell only at the very rear of the Intel booth and in a room inside Microsoft’s booth. Acer makes the box but told Intel the design was so ‘breakthrough’ that it wanted the paperback-book-sized box hidden inside another box at CES. It is reportedly a ‘stunning’ design and smaller even than an Apple TV even though it offers HD.
The Acer RL50 Smart TV is based on Microsoft’s Windows Media Center to access content on the Net and the user’s content that is stored on PCs and storage devices on the home network. A program guide shows what’s played on live TV over the next 14 days. It has a hard disk for recording live TV shows, Wi-Fi, WiDi, DLNA, USB, Windows 7 embedded and Media Center edition for PCs. Dual tuners in Acer’s Microsoft TV box let the user record one show while watching another. The precise HD resolution was not provided.
The box has Intel’s low-cost CE4100 processor for consumer electronics equipment. Intel says it demands that any device that has the C4E100 have unlimited Internet access so the Microsoft TV box is likely to have a full Web browser like Google TV, rather than no web browsing like the Apple TV. There were widgets or apps for Hulu, ABC, NBC, CBS, Viacom and Fox unlike Google TV. Microsoft, of course, has long-standing deals with the various media producers.
Intel’s WiDi technology encodes a video in real time and transmits it from a PC via Wi-Fi 802.11n to a WiDi receiver that’s attached to a TV. The receiving WiDi adapter decodes the content and displays the video on the TV set. Some laptop PCs now come with WiDi. Netgear, so far at least, is the only company to announce a WiDi receiver. At CES Intel showed a D-Link WiDi receiver. The new WiDi 2.0 supports 1080p and HDCP (High Definition Content Protection). Blu-ray video can also be streamed from a PC to a TV.
The search is only for one content source at a time, unlike Google TV, which searches all content sources, even what’s on the DVR when a Dish DVR is attached. The Acer box searches separately for content on Media Center (the Web), the DVR and the next 14 days of live TV.
Approximately half the circuit board is used for AV acceleration, which takes a lot of processing and is not built into the C4100 chip. The C4100 chips are thought to sell for $20 to $30 based on quantities. An Intel representative was demonstrating the Acer box, but no one from Acer was present at the time we visited the Intel booth.
The price for the Acer box has not been announced but is expected to be in the $150 to $300 range, perhaps depending on the size of the HD. Availability was not given.
There are reasons the Xbox 360 cannot be Microsoft TV, and the Acer box illustrates some of them. It does not have tuners, pay-TV capability or a full browser.
In a meeting room inside its booth, Microsoft was showing several products that fall under the Microsoft TV label. It had the Acer Revo box plus a set-top box with six digital tuners that had Acer’s Gateway label. A Reycom box had a TV tuner, access to Internet content and a Blu-ray player. It is a DVR which can stream videos to PCs, Xbox 360 consoles and home servers. There’s a remote and a Windows Phone 7 device that can also act as a remote. It became available in Europe in December and is expected in the US in the first quarter at about $500. It will also make STBs specifically for the pay-TV services.
The UK’s Evolve Media, which makes high-end media servers, has new embedded software called Prime for its media servers ‘ the lifeStation, the lifeStream, the lifeStream Mini and the lifeStore home server.
Switzerland-based Prime Time had a STB with the Windows Embedded Standard 7 platform for pay-TV services. It adds Internet-connectivity. Users can watch live TV, use a DVR, play videos, music and pictures on the TV set. It’s based on Windows Media Center.
Haier has two TVs with Windows Media Center running on a built-in processor. Also in the Haier booth was a TV set running Google’s Android software. Although Microsoft does not offer a browser in Windows Embedded 7, some hardware makers such as Haier did. It can be used to access Web sites to watch online video on the TV set.
It’s not clear why Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer did not highlight Microsoft TV in his keynote (or tablets either). For several years Media Center has been included for free in every copy of Windows Vista and Windows 7, but its use has been low, probably because most consumers don’t connect their PC to the living room TV. It’s not as if Windows users were so taken by Windows Media Center that they were asking for it on a low-cost box like the Acer that connects directly to the TV set.
Perhaps now that Windows Media Server no longer needs a PC and can be used easily in the living room on a low-cost device, consumers will take to it.