Here is a reason that will keep a Vista Media Center from ever entering my household and it's got DRM written all over it.A Vista media center will not let you stream cable video content around your house without using a Media Center Extender (MCX), which at present consists of the Xbox 360, although more third party devices are on there way.
This effectively means you need to buy an MCX device to watch TV around your house and even then it will be controlled by the content owners who will be deciding what you can do with your content.
I also imagine this kicks Slingbox type devices and PMPs out of the arena too so don't even think about watching TV outside your house.
I'm guessing this is a decision from CableLabs rather than from Microsoft, we already know that TiVo is having trouble getting its multi-room viewing and placeshifting ideas past CableLabs for the Series 3.
I don't know about you but this whole thing seems backwards, we had multi-room viewing and placeshifting when we had a video tape. You could take that tape upstairs to watch on another TV and you could take that tape to your friend's house to watch it.
But using more 'advanced' PVR technology with a PC means you are suddenly not allowed to do this unless the content owners say so. Maybe I should dust off my old VCR...
1. Your symptoms are right, but have absolutely nothing to do with multi-room viewing. You might as well title this article "I hate DRM, but at least I can get multi-room viewing with Vista MCE"
Sure, you can't take it on the go, or put it in a handheld device on your couch because there likely won't be any DRM-friendly devices in that form factor that work with MCE. DRM sucks, nothing new. But that's got nothing to do with hooking it up to all rooms/TVs in the house.
And don't complain about having to by an extender, either. Many "consumer choices" for extenders will exist in a little time. So you are either complaining that 1) you have to buy something, or 2) you have to buy an extender.
1) You used to buy a VCR, so this is nothing new.
2) I think most would rather have a slick-looking extender sitting next to your TV rather than your *nix box / network-vid file player of your choice.
Posted at 2:23AM on Dec 5th 2006 by Jay