Why is MS not supporting Media Centre with XB1? *spawn

[Jwm]

With the latest IGN AMA we now have really bad crappy news, to put is nicely anyway.

Via - http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/08/05/ask-microsoft-anything-about-xbox-one

WHITTEN: Xbox One isn’t a native Media Center Extender. We’ll continue to work to enable more ways for everyone to get the television they want over the life of the program.

So this news does make my upgrade choices much cheaper, I will continue to run my 360's as extenders. X1 and PS4 for games and whatever the future of media turns into I can worry about much later.

 

[eastmen]

Preorder canceled

 

[AzBat]

Doesn't sound like Eastmen will be happy about the MCE news. Personally I'm more concerned about DLNA support than anything.

Also the news that a demo is not coming with every digital title sucks royally. MS missed a big opportunity there. They could have had every title with a demo(timed or otherwise) & I think they could tout that as a major incentive. Oh well. It's looking like waiting a year or so for XB1 to mature to be a smart move. Looks like they have some work to do before I spend the cash.

Tommy McClain

 

[Jwm]

Being the gullible one that I am, I will run a 360 into the HDMI in and see if I can teach Kinect 2 the ir codes to control MCE.

Silently I am really bummed about this upcoming generation.

 

[eastmen]

Being the gullible one that I am, I will run a 360 into the HDMI in and see if I can teach Kinect 2 the ir codes to control MCE.

Silently I am really bummed about this upcoming generation.

I am really pissed. I think i'm just sitting out this generation of consoles. Its such an easy feature to support .

 

[expletive]

Seems like they are systematically removing every ecosystem feature that would incentivize people to move from 360 to XBO.

 

[Jwm]

Tapatalk ate my post...

MS needs to reboot and cover each feature in detail, they are killing themselves with this horrible dribble feed of information.

HDMI in vs Media Center? I would take MCE over any crappy tv guide overlay, especially when we don't know how or why it works.

 

[blakjedi]

Its just a function of time. The iPhone didn't come with cut and paste either... there will be updates. Clearly either system will be the most powerful pc that will be in most peoples homes...

 

[Scott_Arm]

I'd be shocked if more than 0.01% of 360 users took advantage of the MCE functionality. I'd expect actual use was much lower than that.

 

[eastmen]

I'd be shocked if more than 0.01% of 360 users took advantage of the MCE functionality. I'd expect actual use was much lower than that.

and ? Start chopping features cause only a minority uses them and soon your left with nothing

 

[Scott_Arm]

and ? Start chopping features cause only a minority uses them and soon your left with nothing

Considering they're still working on getting the UI ready for launch, yeah, I'd chop the shit out of that feature. It's a nice to have, not even a want. Definitely not a must.

 

[dagamer]

Isn't it blindingly obvious that Microsoft just wishes Media Center would go away? It's not worth the investment when there are so many other things they'd rather work on that could theoretically be enjoyed by more people.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

As Microsoft hasn't really done anything with Media Center since 2008/2009, then it isn't terribly surprising. It is still disappointing, however. As I really do like Media Center.

Personally, I'd prefer if the Xbox One were able to freely view network shared storage. But I doubt that is going to happen. And it likely wouldn't have been able to play MKV's (all my fansubbed animes ) natively anyway.

I'm going to guess that there is just an increased focus on DNLA. That makes it far more interoperable any consumer electronics DNLA device. So I could see a large focus from them in that area. Possibly more exciting if it can also serve as a DNLA server (no reason why it couldn't with all the resources reserved for the OS).

Regards,
SB

 

[eastmen]

Isn't it blindingly obvious that Microsoft just wishes Media Center would go away? It's not worth the investment when there are so many other things they'd rather work on that could theoretically be enjoyed by more people.

what investment ? Its already built and working. It works on my windows 8 install which is on a e-350 the successor to the jaguar core. So we know it it will work on jaguar. How hard is it to just put the code on whatever version of windows is running on the xbox one ? I mean they spent all that time working on a guide when they have a guide already for tv channels. It makes zero sense and it lost them a customer.

 

[dagamer]

what investment ? Its already built and working. It works on my windows 8 install which is on a e-350 the successor to the jaguar core. So we know it it will work on jaguar. How hard is it to just put the code on whatever version of windows is running on the xbox one ? I mean they spent all that time working on a guide when they have a guide already for tv channels. It makes zero sense and it lost them a customer.

Umm... it's not?

As for how hard it is to get it working, it doesn't matter because they have to prioritize other things for launch. Again, considering Media Center got ZERO new features in Windows 8, I do not see how you honestly expected them to expend any energy making the Xbox One a Media Center Extender. And I say that as a fan of Media Center having run one from 2009-2012, however, it simply didn't take off the way it needed to honestly warrant dedicating any resources to it this time around. Also, the Media Center team does not exist anymore at Microsoft. Media Center is in maintenance mode.

And I would really be careful saying XYZ is easy. Underestimating the work it takes to QA a feature of a new platform is how things get delayed.

 

[eastmen]

Umm... it's not?

As for how hard it is to get it working, it doesn't matter because they have to prioritize other things for launch. Again, considering Media Center got ZERO new features in Windows 8, I do not see how you honestly expected them to expend any energy making the Xbox One a Media Center Extender. And I say that as a fan of Media Center having run one from 2009-2012, however, it simply didn't take off the way it needed to honestly warrant dedicating any resources to it this time around. Also, the Media Center team does not exist anymore at Microsoft. Media Center is in maintenance mode.

And I would really be careful saying XYZ is easy. Underestimating the work it takes to QA a feature of a new platform is how things get delayed.

the xbox one is running the windows 8 kernel . Media center is up and running on windows 8. Moving it over requires very little if any investment.

I'd actually play for the app if it was $15 or so. Now I simply wont buy the console.

 

[bkilian]

the xbox one is running the windows 8 kernel . Media center is up and running on windows 8. Moving it over requires very little if any investment.

I'd actually play for the app if it was $15 or so. Now I simply wont buy the console.

My windows phone is running the windows 8 kernel, and trust me, it would take a huge engineering investment to make it a media center extender.

The kernel on the XBox one is based on the windows phone 8 version of the windows 8 kernel, with a ton of modifications. The app partition doesn't include the libraries for non modern apps, which MCE almost certainly is. It would have to be rewritten from the ground up using the modern API.

The Game partition has even less resemblance to a windows 8 system, it's as severely cut down as the 360 kernel.

In other words, you have no idea what you're talking about.

 

[eastmen]

My windows phone is running the windows 8 kernel, and trust me, it would take a huge engineering investment to make it a media center extender.

The kernel on the XBox one is based on the windows phone 8 version of the windows 8 kernel, with a ton of modifications. The app partition doesn't include the libraries for non modern apps, which MCE almost certainly is. It would have to be rewritten from the ground up using the modern API.

The Game partition has even less resemblance to a windows 8 system, it's as severely cut down as the 360 kernel.

In other words, you have no idea what you're talking about.

That sucks that they are running a verison of windows phone and now windows 8 proper. Maybe since they bought nokia they can finally get app support on that platform... although starting a joint venture with barnes and nobles has still not resulted in a nook app for the platform.

Still not my fault they can't support their own products properly , this is huge levels of fuck up that they are going through.

Off topic but Microsoft buying Nokia phone and other h/w device units for 7.2 billion.

7.2 b and they can't port media center extender from xbox 360 or windows to xbox one.

Kind of pricey to be an MCE extender.

There were rumors of DVR functionality built in but of course they're going another way.

On the living room tv if it was a mce i'd be able to get rid of the bluray player and xbox 360 and have it do everything I could have wanted. $500 isn't very expensive at all for that considering the price of the other components.

MS is supposed to open up Xbox platform for any app developer right ? Someone should be able to write something to provide MCE functionality, no ? It might not come on day one, but hey, might want to wait and see ?

It might come at some point but a lot of tehse things don't play nice with each other. I already have windows media center working on 5 xbox 360s I don't want to have to risk not being able to view the last 5 years of recordings when I try and get xbmc to work (which is a huge pain in the ass) .


I'm just not going to buy the system. I can spend the $500 on a new gpu and . I said during the drm changes that I wouldn't buy it if it didn't support media center. I was serious.

 

[bkilian]

That sucks that they are running a verison of windows phone and now windows 8 proper. Maybe since they bought nokia they can finally get app support on that platform... although starting a joint venture with barnes and nobles has still not resulted in a nook app for the platform.

Still not my fault they can't support their own products properly , this is huge levels of fuck up that they are going through.

7.2 b and they can't port media center extender from xbox 360 or windows to xbox one.

Maybe I should have put it as "Both the XB1 and WP8 are descended from the same MinWin windows 8 kernel". The XB1 is not running phone software.

And they _can_ port MCE to the box, but considering how ambitious their schedule was even before I left, and they're delivering more than they were originally planning while also being thrown for a loop with the DRM backlash, something has to give. I'm not surprised its the practically unused MCE functionality. They've already had to cut features that would have hit many more users.

 

[eastmen]

Maybe I should have put it as "Both the XB1 and WP8 are descended from the same MinWin windows 8 kernel". The XB1 is not running phone software.

And they _can_ port MCE to the box, but considering how ambitious their schedule was even before I left, and they're delivering more than they were originally planning while also being thrown for a loop with the DRM backlash, something has to give. I'm not surprised its the practically unused MCE functionality. They've already had to cut features that would have hit many more users.

So ms' s plan for this generation was to release a new product thats less capable than an 8 year old product ?

This is just going to cost them customers. I am one of them.