Tales of Windows Media Center Project Management : Where are we now? David Fleischman is a new blogger from Microsoft’s Media Center team. He asks the question, “what do you want to see in Media Center?”
I’m posting my answers in the comments to him (as you should do too) but here’s a list of 10 ideas for starters.
1. Cable or Satellite HDTV
2. Performance improvement for large digital media libraries (specifically large music collections via WMP)
3. Flickr plug in — including the ability to do full screen slide shows similar to “my pictures” with both Flickr favorites, sets and photostreams.
4. The ability to better filter and rate photos. As Vista appears to have the ability to both rate and tag photos allow me the ability to create custom photo slide show playlists of sorts. For instance, if I only want to see photos from 2005, let me do that. If I only want to see photos of my son William, let me do that — irrespective of where the photos are foldered. Let me say run only my 4 and 5 star rated photos, or only my 4 and 5 star rated photos tagged William, etc.
5. HDTV movies video on demand — and not the crappy IMAX stuff offered by CinemaNow today (this will involve much more than Microsoft of course).
6. “My Radio” PVR for the Radio (satellite, FM and internet).
7. Sirius service including the ability to record a podcast of Howard Stern for transfer to my portable media device.
8. Voicemail and telephone services through VOIP including a permanent archive of your voicemail. You should also sell VOIP wireless phones that double as remote controls.
9. Plug in for the Internet Archive as well an editor (perhaps from MSN) who culls the best stuff from the Archive and highlights it up through Online Spotlight.
10. “My Car” Integrate the services of Network Car (you guys should buy them) for vehicle tracking as well as the ability to transfer content (ripped DVDs, television, mp3s, etc.) via wi-fi or by removable hard drive to a GPS enabled auto media center PC in the car.