Digital Media Thoughts – Digital Media News & Views Jason Dunn spent a day with Microsoft last week and apparently was able to discuss some of the news on the new XBox 360 as well as the MCE 2005 update without breaking his NDA. As previously suspected Dunn confirms what we all hate to hear, no support for premium HDTV content in the MCE update. “There were rumours about Emerald incorporating support for HDTV tuners, but that doesn’t seem to be the case based on what I was told.”
Ugh. I think I want to go outside and throw up. Weak, very weak.
Regarding the XBox, “The big deal for me was the built-in Media Center Extender software – with the current generation Xbox, you need to put in a special CD to have the Xbox connect to your MCE 2005 computer, and the end-user experience was pretty horrible because it was essentially a special remote desktop client running. This meant you didn’t get any of the smooth transitions, there was a lag with every button press, and it generally wasn’t great. It was impressive as a proof of concept, but I for one wanted more and the Xbox 360 delivers: because it has a full client built in, you get a first-class experience when using the Xbox 360 as a Media Center Extender.”
So I wonder if by “first class” it means that my music on a new XBox 360 will load up in 7 minutes instead of 12 on the MCE machine.
Lovely. All the glitz and none of the features that matter. Hey, at least we got to hear the Killers play a song.