Microsoft Media Center 2005 Reviewed

Thomas Hawk writes "Microsoft is set to release their new Media Center 2005 by none other than Bill Gates himself in Los Angeles tomorrow. In advance of this announcement, the New York Times (registration required) is running an article on the new product today. The article says that the quality of the MCE television has generally been received as inferior to rival and competitor TiVo. I wrote a review on the new MCE 2005 last week called MCE 2005, Underwhelmed. I'm offering continuing media coverage of MCE 2005."

Hmm. Another Microsoft Solution

[sorcium]

Maybe he will get a blue screen of death when he powers it up, much like he did with Windows 98. Sorry MS but you won't get to monopolize the TIVO industry

Noisy Hard Drive = No Thanks

[bigtallmofo]

Call me picky, but I find even the quietest hard drives (Seagate Barracuda line is the quietest I've found) are unacceptably loud when used in a media PC in my living room. That constant humming is a big annoyance. Add to that, unless the case is an ITX format or smaller, I find a media PC unacceptably large for my living room as well. I've experimented with various harddrive-less media players/recorders but haven't found one that I liked enough to even mention by name here.

Re:More Features

[Kazoo the Clown]

Whats new-- Microsoft's entire success is due solely to protectionist schemes-- any time they are forced to compete on a level playing field by design merit they fail miserably. Expect them to buy TiVo out, try to make some special deal with some big content company or instill one of their patents, in order to make their product "better" by locking the competition out-- it's just their way...

Somewhat misleading customer satisfaction

[StateOfTheUnion]

From the NY times article Regardless of how they get Media Center computers, Mr. Brooks said people like them when they get them home. Microsoft's surveys, he said, found that more than 90 percent of the owners of the Media Center computers are satisfied with them, far more than the percentage of basic PC owners. Eight out of nine, he said, would recommend the product to a friend.

That doesn't surprise me but I think that the figure is intrinsically misleading . . . at only 3% of the market, these media PC's are probably primarily bought by the diehard enthusiast types. These are exactly the same group that would be most likely to be very satisfied with the product. The average Joe that is much more fickle and impatient currently wouldn't even consider buying one of these for his/her living room . . . at least not until they become much more mainstream . . .

Re:More Features

[Dr Reducto]

Actually, I know a girl whose parents bought her a nice computer for college. I was in her room, and saw the Media Center Sticker on her computer and asked her if she liked it. She had no idea what I was talking about. I still havent convinced her to set it up and use it as a TiVo.

I'm unimpressed

[El]

I've got a very expensive Sony Media Center PC. The program guide and remote control are nice, but the thing takes forever to switch channels, and video quality is poor (it appears to be dropping frames like crazy when receive standard broadcast TV with a lot of movement). Sure, I can pause live TV, but what good is that when it looks like crap? Of course, it is difficult to say how much of this is the fault of the software, and how much is because of the hardware -- but killing every other process running seems to help.

Re:What news, what news.

[reverseengineer]

Tivo --- Cheap, works, easy to use, easy to setup.
MythTV --- Cheap, works, easy to use, difficult to setup.
MCE --- Expensive, works, easy to use, modertly difficult to setup.

The only problem with your otherwise insightful analysis is that the MCE "works" only for a rather limited definition of "working" compared to the functionality of the other products on the market. It does less and costs more, and Microsoft's principal argument for you to purchase one seems to be, "Hey, we're Microsoft. You may be familiar with some of our other products."

Re:Hmm. Another Microsoft Solution

[Trolling4Dollars]

Speaking of blue screens... did anyone ever notice that the Windows XP Logon Screen (the pretty one with all the playschool buttons) is mostly... blue? Wanna guess why? Maybe they were hoping if XP bluescreened, a user wouldn't be able to tell from a distance because they'd still see blue and think it was the logon screen. ;P (I kid! I kid! Because of love!!!)

Re:Can it join a domain?

[Wesley Felter]

Since MCE is only available preloaded on PCs, and those PCs must have TV tuner cards and remotes, it's hard to imagine than an MCE PC would be cheaper than a regular PC with XP Pro.

Re:More Features

[superpulpsicle]

The superior solution years from now will the the solution with no subscription plan.

Someone in slashdot pointed out from previous articles that Snapstream could use XML TV to get data from Zap2it. I have tried it, and I ran into every firewall brick wall you can imagine.

Granted I can still schedule shows via Snapstream to record by punching in 9:00 for example. It's just not the same having that TV guide menu like the paid Tivo service.