Be prepared for a holiday onslaught from Microsoft and Intel to promote the new Windows Media Center 2005. It's called "Digital Joy." No, really.
It reminds me of an old TRS-80 ad (yes, that old), in which a boy holding a basketball walks up the TRS-80 and types in a few commands to see what time his baksetball game is. He then excitedly rushes out the door. No joke, that was really how the PC was being pushed into the home back then. Apparently the folks at Radio Shack had not considered Post-It notes.
Fast way forward to winter 2004 and the Media Center is coming. Microsoft has been iterating on this idea for a long time, and frankly owes everyone who bought the early stuff a BIG apology.
Now with Media Center 2005, they seems to have the right recipe. Rather than walking up to the PC to run some media, the PC sits out of sight somewhere and you acess media from your TV, your stereo, etc. The Media Center PC then serves up the video stream, music, photos, etc, to all manner of devices on your home network that are conneted to an Extender.
This really brings home the concept of a central server, like a water heater, in your house with pipes (wireless of course) delivering the water to a number of spigots. I think I've carried this metaphor far enough.
So far, the Media Center 2005 is only available on a new PC so you will not be able to add the software to an existing set up. However, given that these Media Center PCs have multiple TV Tuners to record incoming TV programs a la TiVo, it may be well worth it to get it all packaged up in a new box.
The downside, as is the case with most end to end systems, is that you have to have a Microsoft -based PC and Microsoft-based Extenders, although you will be bale to buy these Extenders from Dell, HP, etc.
Hopefully Microsoft has made the set up and operation of this system bulletproof so that Digital Dads worldwide will not curse and suffer on Christmas morning. Joy!
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