“Open letter” to MCE Community from Joe Belfiore Joe Belfiore, the General Manager of the eHome Group at Micorosoft is out with an open letter to the Media Center community. Belfiore’s kind of the big boss over there on the Media Center team.
My favorite part:
“We’ve had terrific collaboration with broadcasters and other folks in the TV industry, and some of the results from these collaborations have already started to become visible. In Europe just a few weeks ago, we announced an alliance with Nagra, one of the world’s leading producers of conditional access technology that’s used by cable and satellite operators to protect premium digital TV broadcasts. Together with Nagra and Canal+ Group (a French satellite service), we demonstrated a tuner device that enables Media Center to deliver protected digital content not just on the Media Center PC but also to extender devices around the home network. This technology isn’t yet ready to be shipped in products you can buy, but the prototype device gives you a glimpse of a near-future (emphasis mine) where Media Center works with these types of services. In the here and now, of course, this fall’s update to Media Center Edition includes support for high-definition (HD) over-the-air broadcast in the U.S. (with dual-HD tuners), and can enable you to watch that HDTV on your Xbox 360!”
Reading between the lines, I would read this portion to read, not to put words in Belfiore’s mouth or anything but, “get ready for premium HDTV in Vista.”
Now that would be a good thing.
This is a nice letter from Joe. I’d encourage you to click through and read the whole thing. Good communication and a good PR move.
Also out in his letter is the fact that Microsoft has now sold four million copies of Media Center. This is the first time I’ve seen the four million number in print, but perhaps I missed it someplace else. Of course Belfiore’s comparison of these numbers to stand-alone DVRs is a little misleading as more recenly many Media Center PCs are being sold without TV tuners and it ships as the default OS for both Dell and Gateway at present. Still, four million is an impressive number.
Nice work Joe and it’s good to see the communication. Now, if only we could convince you to start blogging.