Microsoft is offering free upgrades to PCs that run its Windows Media Center software that add Internet TV and Media Center’s version of Slingbox called WebGuide.
“It’s a good example of how the Media Center platform keeps evolving,” said Scott Evans, group manager in the entertainment and devices eHome division at Microsoft.
The Internet TV feature lets the user watch ad-supported Internet-based content such as TV reruns and sporting events. They can be accessed just like any other show available through Media Center.
Microsoft’s Internet TV is not Microsoft’s IPTV, the software that it’s selling to many of the world’s phone companies so they can offer pay-TV and increase their revenue and compete with the cable and satellite TV services. Anyway, Microsoft now calls its IPTV product Mediaroom, and it uses a set-top box that connects to the TV set just like the ones from the cable and satellite companies.
WebGuide is a third-party application that enables a Media Center PC to do what Slingbox does in terms of both placeshifting and time-shifting. From any Internet connected device such as a mobile phone and from any location that has a Web connection, users can access anything that they can access if they were sitting at their PC – previously recorded TV shows and movies, TV shows playing on the PC, downloaded videos or music. Users can also remotely schedule TV recordings ‘ la TiVo with the Media Center’s DVR capability.
Microsoft has obtained exclusive rights to WebGuide and hired Doug Berrett, the guy that founded the company.
Maybe Media Center PCs will eventually end up in the living room after all, despite all those wires, the noise and the heat.
At the recent CEDIA trade show, Microsoft and some of its Media Center partners made product announcements:
– Lifeware showed its own line of Windows Media Center hardware, including new high-end systems featuring Quad-CableCARD-tuners. It also announced it’s working on a Windows Home Server Add-in to its already-announced Windows Home Server-based Lifestorage server.
– The home automation outfit Crestron Electronics said it’ll now be a Windows Media Center OEM and will deliver Windows Media Center-based hardware in 2008.
– The multi-room audio manufacturer Russound will deliver its Smart Media Console line in fall 2007. They provide custom installers with a turnkey solution for enabling advanced home automation and integration with Russound’s whole home audio solutions, allowing faster installs and less programming for integrators.
– Niveus Media’s digital video recorder functionality will support up to four digital cable HD tuners for simultaneous viewing throughout the home.
– Alienware has an HD Media Server for easy-to-use, high-definition content acquisition, storage and distribution.
– Microsoft demonstrated new Extenders for Windows Media Center that will allow installers to deliver the Windows Media Center experience in up to five additional zones in a home.
Faultline comment: When nobody bought Windows Media PCs, Microsoft decided to bundle the software for free, and by adding Slingbox function for free it is now back in the realms of anti-trust, targeting a new genre of hardware and software products. Is it also possibly infringing on Sling Media patent applications. If the software was to cost money or the Widows Media PC cost money, that might be fine, but copying the software and giving it away are not legal for any kind of monopoly, and this is likely to see Microsoft in trouble again.