I wonder how much of this is the 'true truth', and, of the 'true truth'...how much of it applies to Windows Media Center.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/opinion/04brass.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

An excerpt--

"Microsoft’s huge profits — $6.7 billion for the past quarter — come almost entirely from Windows and Office programs first developed decades ago. Like G.M. with its trucks and S.U.V.’s, Microsoft can’t count on these venerable products to sustain it forever. Perhaps worst of all, Microsoft is no longer considered the cool or cutting-edge place to work. There has been a steady exit of its best and brightest.

What happened? Unlike other companies, Microsoft never developed a true system for innovation. Some of my former colleagues argue that it actually developed a system to thwart innovation. Despite having one of the largest and best corporate laboratories in the world, and the luxury of not one but three chief technology officers, the company routinely manages to frustrate the efforts of its visionary thinkers."

I have experience working for a large corporation...I tend to believe that the author of this piece (*** Brass) is more right than he is wrong.

So how much of what Mr. Brass writes DOES apply to Windows Media Center?

 The same concepts in the article can be applied to all teams within (or team that use to make up) E&D (Media Center, Xbox, Zune, MediaRoom).

 I dunno, but Media Center is sooooo frustrating from the standpoint that everything is in place for greatness, yet someone doesn't seem to realize it.  It really is that close to becoming one of the ultimate home solutions, yet something stops it just short.  Seems like they'd realize it could be a huge catalyst to buy equipment and sell more copies of Windows 7.

rantanamo:

 I dunno, but Media Center is sooooo frustrating from the standpoint that everything is in place for greatness, yet someone doesn't seem to realize it. 

greatness in media center won't translate to significant revenue. MS makes money selling the OS and apps. media center is a throw-in, just like the snipping tool, or freecell (albeit significantly more complex). while most of us here love media center, the reality is that there are not that many users. not many users = not enough demand = not enough ROI to justify MS spending much resource on it. we're probably lucky we got something as good as it is.

qamfan:

rantanamo:

 I dunno, but Media Center is sooooo frustrating from the standpoint that everything is in place for greatness, yet someone doesn't seem to realize it. 

greatness in media center won't translate to significant revenue. MS makes money selling the OS and apps. media center is a throw-in, just like the snipping tool, or freecell (albeit significantly more complex). while most of us here love media center, the reality is that there are not that many users. not many users = not enough demand = not enough ROI to justify MS spending much resource on it. we're probably lucky we got something as good as it is.

Well said

I worked at IBM in the 80's, and when our R&D budget reached $1b, I remember reading an article saying "nobody will ever catch up to them."  Apple notwithstanding, I think it is very difficult for organizations to shift away from the basis of their success (a la GM and SUV's).  MS obviously understands the need to innovate, but seems to struggle to create the space organizationally for new ideas to thrive. 

It's hard to believe there isn't an opportunity in being the hub of the digital home, but MS can't seem to capitalize on their substantial advantages.  It seems to me the biggest thing missing from Media Center is a vibrant 3rd party marketplace, a la Apple's app store & iTunes.  No disrespect to the folks who created a whole range of useful tools in their spare time, but I think if you had high quality, stable, supported plugins for a variety of services (Hulu, YouTube, Pandora, etc.) it would be a much more compelling proposition.  It doesn't even seem to be that hard to get started - witness the widgets shipping with things like the HP TouchSmart computers and even TV"s now.

My 2 bits.

If they would invest into intergration of Zune Marketplace into Media Center it would be a start.  So I could buy videos and music right from my 10ft interface.

Tracer:

If they would invest into intergration of Zune Marketplace into Media Center it would be a start.  So I could buy videos and music right from my 10ft interface.

People with Media Center PCs connected to big screen = .01% of Windows users (I made up this figure, but there are 60+ million Windows 7 license out there.  .01% is 600,000 which likely should be cut by 1/3 for a more accurate number)

People with Xbox 360 connected to a big screen =  39+ million

The choice of which to support was simple when you think about it, and this points plays right into the article about teams competing with each other.  Don't think eHome didn't/doesn't want Zune in Media Center, but Zune likely doesn't feel the same way toward Media Center.

qamfan:

rantanamo:

 I dunno, but Media Center is sooooo frustrating from the standpoint that everything is in place for greatness, yet someone doesn't seem to realize it. 

greatness in media center won't translate to significant revenue. MS makes money selling the OS and apps. media center is a throw-in, just like the snipping tool, or freecell (albeit significantly more complex). while most of us here love media center, the reality is that there are not that many users. not many users = not enough demand = not enough ROI to justify MS spending much resource on it. we're probably lucky we got something as good as it is.

Darn you Microsoft!  I can't get the snipping tool to work on my Extender!

I would definately recommend and even help friends and family install MC7 with WHS behind the scenes and a quad cable tuner card if they can tie it all togehter.  I need to be able to put the tuner in my WHS and then have that record the shows and have any PC view live tv from anywhere in the house.  Build it and they will come.  I agree.. it's on the brink of greatness.  

Well said.  Case in point: I have a coworker who is somewhat anti-Microsoft that would bash MC but when he came over to my house. He was drooling over my simple setup of Media Center going to LCD and a HTiB (it's just driving speakers, I'm not using the 5-disc changer part of it) and how everything was tied in. Surprisingly, he had praise for InternetTV ...

Microsoft does seem adept at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Some of their problems are due to forces beyond their control, such as poorly written 3rd party drivers, but they shoulder much of the blame themselves.

This site is a perfect example. There's a world of difference between Mac fanbois and Windows users. Windows users tend to be a lot more dispassionate and much less loyal than the Mac users. How many times have you seen a Mac fanboi chime in and claim (falsely), "You wouldn't have these problems if you used a Mac." I use a Mac every day and its no more stable, versatile, or user friendly than its Windows counterparts.

However, this site could be a perfect conduit for Microsoft to reach out to users loyal enough to jump through all the hoops to build a Windows-based Media Center PC. With just a little encouragement we could be Windows fanbois proclaiming to the world how great Win7 Media Center is despite its high cost (another area that the Mac fanbois seem able to justify), and how Win7 is so good we use it on our other computers, too.  Whenever someone new visits my house and sees I have my whole music collection, recorded TV, and DVD playback from a server in another room all on a 10' interface to my flat-screen and surround sound system they're very impressed. Looks great, sounds great, and its all controlled from the comfort of my sectional.

But instead, even though they bought this site they largely ignore it. A question I'd asked about music cutting out about 20 seconds before the end of a song went unanswered for months (posted in the Ask Microsoft Music and Photos team) and it wasn't until someone pointed out that there was an actual MS bulletin about it on their main site and it was driver related that I finally got an answer to my question, and I don't think the answer was from anyone at MS. Obviously MS knew about it - how hard would it have been for an MS rep to just post a link?

Jessica (sorry, forgot her last name) used to post here regularly until she transferred to another division. She was knowledgeable about Media Center and could spout the company line without coming off as a shill. No one else has come along to take her place.

We're on the verge of a major paradigm shift in terms of television delivery. Broadband data rates are slowly rising and are set to explode as FioS and Uverse penetrate deeper. More and more we will get our television from other sources besides over the air and cable. Of course, this terrifies the cable companies. And much like the music industry, they're hastening their own demise by making their product less user friendly rather than embracing the new technology with even more locked down systems and never-ending price hikes.

If Microsoft could demonstrate superiority in the area of convergence they could do for television what Apple did for digital music distribution and, to a lesser degree, cell phones. And as Apple's focus moves more toward gadgets it is gradually moving away from the Mac, putting Microsoft in an even better position.

But Microsoft keeps stumbling. They need to ignite their user base from the ground up. That means not shutting out us DIYers with OEM-only stuff (like TVPack, etc.). Those of us that have used Windows since the 1.x versions have always provided better user support than Microsoft themselves ever could, and usually for free. And once again, it isn't out of any zealous loyalty to MS. In fact, many of us complain just as loudly (sometimes more so) about Microsoft than the biggest Apple fanboi on the planet. We don't have any misconceptions that Windows is the greatest thing since sliced bread - it's just the best compromise at this time. I've tried Linux several times and I'm just not propeller-head enough to embrace it yet. Plus, I like to buy commercial software and there just ain't a lot of it for Linux. And don't even get me started on the shortcomings of the Mac and Apple in general (I'm a bit famous for causing Mac fanbois great distress). And everything else is just a bit player. I would like love to see something better than Windows come along, but it hasn't happened yet. Maybe Google has a chance.

Meanwhile, Microsoft would be really smart to motivate as many people as possible to become unpaid ambassadors. Windows has the huge advantage of being the OS of choice both for the mainstream user that prefers to buy a turn-key computer and for the tinkerer that likes to build their own computers. Windows users don't need a "Genius Bar" - they probably already know a Windows "Genius." With a 90%+ market share they have the largest installed base in the world and therefore more people know the particulars and peculiarities of Windows than any other system. It high time they started capitalizing on that and quit ignoring the very people that would like to help them if they were only allowed to do so.

"Complexity" of setup and the required patience to get it done... My wife and I were actually talking about this last night. She loves our WMC setup. I have ripped our entire optical media collection to our media center machine. It's our DVR (for the ClearQAM only at this time), our disc player, our jukebox, our media server.... the list goes on.

I can't, in good conscience, recommend it to people without some technical know-how. They come over and see our setup and immediatelly proclaim they want it as well. However, I usually tell them that it's kinda complicated to get everything working as I have setup. I advise them to wait. (this is all for purely selfish reasons as I don't want to provide free support to everyone that decides to go this route. I already made that mistake once) Aside from the "out-of-the-box" functionality, I have to install 2 full-blown apps, 2 plugins and several media codecs just to get it to a functional state. Let's not even talk about what is required to get your media collections over to it in useable and playable formats. It's still not completely there, but it's tolerable to my wife.

I'm also aware that being a PC at it's core, that opens up all kinds of compatability issues. There are always a hundered different ways to reach the same result. I know it's hard for Microsoft to pony up money to license every format, test it thouroughly and include it in the build. Content provders definately don't make this any easier either.

It's on the verge, but I'm not promoting it just yet. We've actually ducked some parties to be held at our house so that we don't spend most of the time explaining our system and what's involved for those interested in doing it themselves. Learned that the hard way.

On a side note,

Microsoft needs to get off their ass and make a media extender. Passively cool the 360, remove the hard drive, optical drive, controller/usb/mem card considerations and slap it in a smaller form factor that isn't irritatingly white to sell for $100.