2006: Battle for the Living Room

[scooby_dooby]

Things change so quickly with MS, it's hard to keep-track.

I think I was basing it off of this:
http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/1206/new_details_on

"Because of the complexity and how advance the UI is, it is said that Diamond will have its own special Aero Tier. A tier requiring much higher system specifications than even Aero Glass ... the default for Windows Vista

No one outside Microsoft knows what level of graphical power and memory Diamond will need. But I am hazarding a guess that the GPU power will need a recent DX9 card and around 2GB of RAM," ponders James.

I guess it's just speculation at this point.

 

[patsu]

Is there other alternatives ? Based on the last few posts, I have jumped to the conclusion early that software upgrade to Media PC is probably too difficult for most unless they buy a fresh Media PC hardware. The remaining unanswered question is how much is an average Media PC hardware as others have asked ?

Also if this is the current scenario, we can continue to expect new entries from major players. And one of them will be handsomely rewarded as the new master of the living room.

 

[Bobbler]

Sure as hell hope not!

Vista already sounds bloated enough... a 2GB ram requirement to run comfortably is scary thought! I'd need like 4gb of ram then if I wanted to run any software

 

[expletive]

Is there other alternatives ? Based on the last few posts, I have jumped to the conclusion early that software upgrade to Media PC is probably too difficult for most unless they buy a fresh Media PC hardware. The remaining unanswered question is how much is an average Media PC hardware as others have asked ?

Also if this is the current scenario, we can continue to expect new entries from major players. And one of them will be handsomely rewarded as the new master of the living room.

The market moved from dos 6.2 to windows 3.1, 3.1 to 95, 95 to 98, 98 to 98se, 98se to Win 2000, win 2000 to win xp, win xp to win xp MCE, i'm sure somehow, if the planets align correctly, people will upgrade.

Are you making the argument there will be a major new OS player?

 

[Sis]

Sure as hell hope not!

Vista already sounds bloated enough... a 2GB ram requirement to run comfortably is scary thought! I'd need like 4gb of ram then if I wanted to run any software

I'm thinking no. 1 gig is probably reality.

.Sis

 

[AzBat]

The market moved from dos 6.2 to windows 3.1, 3.1 to 95, 95 to 98, 98 to 98se, 98se to Win 2000, win 2000 to win xp, win xp to win xp MCE, i'm sure somehow, if the planets align correctly, people will upgrade.

Are you making the argument there will be a major new OS player?

LOL, btw, I think you missed Win ME in there. Though I can definitely understand why you might want to forget it existed. LOL

Tommy McClain

 

[patsu]

The market moved from dos 6.2 to windows 3.1, 3.1 to 95, 95 to 98, 98 to 98se, 98se to Win 2000, win 2000 to win xp, win xp to win xp MCE, i'm sure somehow, if the planets align correctly, people will upgrade.

Are you making the argument there will be a major new OS player?

No. Someone to dominate the living room (See topic title). Doesn't have to be a PC guy does it ?

 

[Sis]

Though I can definitely understand why you might want to forget it existed. LOL

Tommy McClain

What does that even mean?

.Sis

 

[expletive]

LOL, btw, I think you missed Win ME in there. Though I can definitely understand why you might want to forget it existed. LOL

Tommy McClain

Damn, the post would have been way more compelling by including WinME in the mix!

EDIT: I actually have a PC in the house with ME on it but im afraid to ge near it to upgrade it.

 

[Bobbler]

What does that even mean?

.Sis

Possibly relating to the fact that WinME was awful. I think a lot of people want to forget it. Win2k was definately a nice jump/sidestep from ME.

 

[expletive]

No. Someone to dominate the living room (See topic title). Doesn't have to be a PC guy does it ?

No but when you mention something like upgrading windows as a hurdle (due to memory requirements or whatever) for MS to overcome, well, people have been doing that since 8-track tapes were all the rage.

 

[Sis]

Possibly relating to the fact that WinME was awful. I think a lot of people want to forget it. Win2k was definately a nice jump/sidestep from ME.

No doubt; it was awful. Just didn't get why it was personally directed at expletive.

.Sis

 

[scooby_dooby]

Adoption of Vista will really depend what it brings to the table.

If it is much more secure, look nicer, and solves many problems people have with their current PC's. Namely: SPYWARE, then people will upgrade very quickly, as they are recommened to do so by the 'experts'

If it's a steaming pile of crap like ME, then adoption will ve much slower.

It's like win2k vs XP, 2k was great but it didn't really do anything new, didn't look all that different, and never really took off. Once XP came out, it looked much nicer, had alot of new features, and was much more stable than 98(as was 2k) and it took off very quickly.

 

[Carl B]

More on AMD's 'Live':

...Yesterday NVIDIA announced that it will partner with AMD to push the LIVE! initiative. NVIDIA already has been focusing on the home entertainment market for more than two years and the experience they posses would surely be helpful to the alliance. With nForce products widely used for home media computers, AMD technically has an edge over Intel in terms of installed base. From the PR, NVIDIA stated:

NVIDIA expects that the NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) FX, NVIDIA GeForce 6-Series and NVIDIA GeForce 7-Series desktop and notebook graphics processing units (GPUs) as well as the Company's NVIDIA nForce(R)4 core-logic solutions, will be complementary with AMD LIVE! This includes hardware and software for both 32-bit and 64-bit computing environments.

VIA today announced its support for AMD as well, stating that its latest K8T900 and K8M890 are AMD LIVE! ready. We can expect that VIA will be producing more integrated solutions to reflect AMD’s direction. AMD LIVE! brings together more component integration and we will likely see more features being integrated into single and two chip solutions from both NVIDIA and VIA. With upcoming chipsets, VIA says it is also integrating support for the latest 1080P HD resolutions...

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=184

 

[AzBat]

No doubt; it was awful. Just didn't get why it was personally directed at expletive.

.Sis

Not meant as a personal attack on Expletive, I was just being funny since he went through all the Windows versions except ME which just so happened to be least liked version of the bunch. Evidently I didn't succeed. LOL

Tommy McClain

 

[Carl B]

And some Viiv highlights from CES (via Engadget):

...5:07 Don MacDonald from Intel's digital home group comes out to talk about Viiv.

"Viiv had to be easy to use, it had to have a performance capability to thrill users, and it had to ..." something about being integrated.

Don shows demo of home setup. "The LCD actually takes longer to power down and power up than the Viiv PC." He refers to "the demanding environment of the living room."

"Unfortunately standards are necessary, but not sufficient. We need to build on top of standards." He's looking through ESPN options for March Madness games.

(This is a long demo of video menus and content.)

5:15 Don shows off various form factors from differnet makers. Many wouldn't be recognized as PCs but as living room consumer electronics.

5:15 Don: "All of these systems are available either today, or in the next few weeks. Prices start at below 900 dollars."...

5:30 AOL chair Jonathan Miller comes onstage. He refers to video segments as "assets." There are several hundred thousand "assets" in the service. Big-screen demo of surfing the assets and choosing a Welcome Back Kotter rerun (which isn't HD, we note.)

Now we're getting a Babylon 5 clip in ... well, not HD. But they have 14,000 TV series.

...5:48 Paul finally alone again onstage. "Today on Viiv at its launch, there are 2 million songs, 100,000 music videos, 10,000 TV shows ... Welcome to The New Normal."...

 

[patsu]

xbdestroya,

Do they have a URL for the service ?

 

[Carl B]

xbdestroya,

Do they have a URL for the service ?

This is all I can find in terms of 'official' Intel material, but I'm sure there's more elsewhere:

http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20051130corp.htm

 

[Sis]

Not meant as a personal attack on Expletive, I was just being funny since he went through all the Windows versions except ME which just so happened to be least liked version of the bunch. Evidently I didn't succeed. LOL

Tommy McClain

No, this was my fault. With all the mudslinging yesterday, I figured yours was more of it. My apologies...

.Sis

 

[Carl B]

I'll just toss this in also just because:

AT&T and Verizon turning to Microsoft for IPTV to the home

This doesn't get all that much attention -- at least not yet -- but Microsoft isn't placing all its bets on the Xbox 360 or Media Center in the battle to control the living room; they've also been pushing hard to get mixed up with how television is delivered to the home (insert obligatory joke here about your TV crashing). Comcast has been testing Microsoft's Foundation software for cable set-top boxes for awhile, but they're hoping to be all over IPTV this year, they've recently announced that both Verizon and AT&T are starting to slowly roll-out IPTV over fiber using Microsoft TV IPTV Edition here in the States. There's almost a ridiculous amount of behind-the-scenes activity both here and abroad -- a lot of people probably don't even realize that it's Microsoft powering their set-top box -- and XChange has a detailed interview with Ed Graczyk, director of marketing and communications for Microsoft TV that gives a good overview of their efforts.

With all the distribution announcements at CES this year, looks like the 'battle' will come even sooner and be even more aggressive than I thought. Ignoring the above article, it seems everyone from Yahoo and Google, to Cable and Telcos, to the 'usual players,' to people like iRiver and other smaller companies; they're all gunning for it.