Windows 8 Media Center Will Be An Add-On - Page 7

That is because Jobs wanted a complete package with the Apple experience.

That's my impression as well.

I have to say that I'm quite happy using my non-touch Desktop PC running the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, hot-spots and all. I will not be reverting to Windows 7.

The only thing I will be keeping Windows 7 on is my HTPC, because I see no value in upgrading it to Windows 8 Pro in order to get more or less the same version of Windows Media Center that I have now.

We'll have to wait and see what is what with the next preview. I think it's valid and certainly appropriate to criticize Metro and how Microsoft is trying to skull**** us with it at this point but the next preview is supposed to be as close to the shipping product as any of us can get until it's done, and it may be that we can, in the end, just turn Metro off and go back to what we know and love. Nothing is finalized yet.

Why is that always used as an example. Lord, people love to generalize the success or failure of wp as an outright rejection of the interface. The reality is sooo far from that. Its when they take headlines as the gospel and don't even bother to find out the whole story. There are plenty of other issues going on to hurt wp, but thats not what this thread is about.






I think most of that is true as well (except the ugly part, a very subjective point), and yet there sits the desktop, for all of us to use. You make it sound like you cant help but use Metro on a desktop. That's not true at all. I don't use it as an interface. I turn on my pc, click desktop, and don't look back. If I need an app I start typing and it shows up. If I want to browse them, I go to the right side and pull up the charms to hit search and find what I need.

Look, it is completely jarring to not see that start menu orb. I get that and I have felt it too. I feel your pain in that respect, but I have found that I can still get to what I need without much, if any, more effort. It sure is different, but the desktop is largely what I am use to.


The metro side of things just wont replace my experience, so I wont be doing much in it unless apps get compelling. However, on a tablet, I can see myself mostly living in metro because it feels much more natural there. When I do want to use a metro app now, all I do is let it sit to the side (in that slim mode) of my main screen, my desktop.





Nothing wrong with criticizing it, the whole point of a beta is to get feedback from us that hopefully MS can use to make changes that are needed.

But one thing that this shows is that MS really is not allowed to change the base UI of Windows. For all the people that bash MS for being stuck in the mud or never willing to make big changes, there are equally vocal people that do not want that UI altered in any significant way. MS is stuck either way.


I believe that ultimately the only way to make everyone happy would be to offer a method for allowing Win 8 to boot straight to the desktop and to restore the start menu orb in some manner. I think most would accept the handful of changes to the desktop that are tied to metro as long as they had those two things.

Not to mention the insane cost of switching to Apple. I would not want to pay three times the price for half the power wrt a desktop...and then not be able to run most applications on it anyway.

Mac's can run Windows in Bootcamp, which a lot do, or use VM, due to their employers design Windows Legacy only applications. As for Apple, what App's are you stating that will not work with their computers" And half the power, doubtful, since their machines are running Intel processors now, and just as fast or faster as their Windows counterparts. As for the three times price, they are no more costlier than a top of the line Windows machine with half the power.

I don't care about the Start Menu and never have, nor do I use icons on the desktop. The Start Menu has always been a loser of an interface because it requires laborious navigation and goes away when you select something from it, requiring one to go through the navigation every time. That was immediately obvious to me back when I first ran an NT4 beta, and I don't know how anyone could tolerate regular use of it. I've always viewed it as nothing more than a dumping ground for program installers, to be used on a very rare basis, maybe a couple times a week to find rarely used programs whose icons aren't worth copying into a better launcher.

Microsoft finally did something great and new in Windows 7 with the taskbar, which I use in a multi-row configuration with extensive pinning. Not only does it help one start programs and find open windows (the latter being the taskbar's original purpose), Microsoft added jump lists and capabilities like progress indicators in the icons of running programs. Metro apps throw all this away, which is one of the many reasons I hate it. I gave a few more earlier in the thread.

Going forward, after losing the phone and tablet markets, Microsoft felt it had to try something fundamentally different than what the successful companies have already done. They're betting the company on this foolish consistency between non-touch and touch devices, and they are devoting resources accordingly, resources that could be better spent elsewhere. Moreover, a lot of developers will no doubt waste time chasing this pipe dream.

Mac Pro (only desktop you can get, no one would seriously consider the Mac Mini a desktop) quad core STARTS at $2500. For $2500, I could buy a death machine PC...with Apple, I get a 2.8GHz Quad Core Nehelem, 3GB RAM, a 1TB HDD, and a Radion 5770.

Sure, you can setup an emulator to do things, but why buy a slower and more expensive machine just to cripple it further with emulation? You can buy 4 PCs more powerful than the Mac Pro for the same price as 1 Mac Pro. You can then setup a small LAN and game on them...something the Mac is not known to be able to do much of.

But if you want to do desktop publishing, the Mac is on par with modern PCs for it.

A big time +1 here!
Everyone, pile on the Mac guy!!
(It's a joke, relax!)

Emulator, who stated anything about a emulator. You know nothing about how Bootcamp & dual booting Windows on a Apple machine works, do you? And no, Mac's are not just for desktop publishing. Again believing the FUD along with those that think that everything ties into iTunes, and iTunes is the devil.

I can't run my media center tuners on a mac. Why is it even coming up? Irrelavent.

Because Macistinians (maybe Macistanis is better...) think Macs are the shizznit.

Yeh I never got the whole Apple lovefest thing, over priced and locked down, no thanks.
I did use Apple a long time ago before Adobe was available and working on the PC side.

How exactly does Metro throw all of the Win 7 taskbar features away when the desktop in Win 8 uses the same taskbar features? I'm using those features right now. In fact one of the first things I did when trying Win 8 was to set up my pinned places, etc. Its all still there.

And if you didn't notice, they actually did make improvements to desktop experience that have nothing to do with Metro. So again, for you it comes down to Metro existing at all and that the system starts up in the Metro start screen. If MS allowed you to boot straight to the desktop, sounds like you would be quite happy with Win 8.

For me its simply MS adding a new interface option. Outside of boot into the start screen, I don't even have to use the metro ui. So far, the desktop doesn't feel gimped to me. Yes, I did have to get use to the charms interface and the corner behaviors, but they aren't controls I would be using all the time anyway, so it didn't hurt so much.


To be honest, I think it would have been alot harder on MS if they had tried to make a tablet OS and desktop OS side by side. There would be too much fragmentation when it makes alot more sense to base both on the same architecture (i.e. winrt) and offer a UI to suit the platforms. Maybe they could separate them better for those of us that want nothing to do with the metro ui, but i dont think the idea is flawed.

I specifically said "Metro apps". They run full screen with the taskbar not in sight. Of course, they don't need a taskbar to find windows because you can only have one full-screen Metro app open at a time, or at most two in a non-overlapping side-by-side configuration. Again, it's reminiscent of Windows 1.0 and the crippled version of GEM circa 1985. Combined with the Metro start screen, I'm reminded of a DOS menu-based program, such as various disk drive diagnostic programs, Terabyte's imaging software, etc.

Starting around 12 minutes in, Episode 257 of "Windows Weekly" contains the following discussion about 8MC between program host Leo Laporte and Windows/Microsoft experts Mary Jo Foley and Paul Thurrott:

* * *

LP: Oh no, oh no -- it's an add-on pack?! Tell me it's not an add-on pack!

PT: It's an add-on pack, and you pay for it.

LP: Ohh, which means no one will buy it, because we already saw, the reason that they're deprecating it is nobody clicks on it.

PT: Actually, what they've done is guaranteed that a tiny percentage of people will ever buy it, thus proving their point that nobody uses it.

LP: Right.

PT: It's sad, though, because unfortunately, for better or worse, Media Center was just something that came free with Windows, so not including that as part of Windows 8 Pro is ---

LP: Well, this is worse, 'cause I mean, you can't get it on Windows 8, you can only get it on Pro?

PT: Yeah.

LP: But, aren't the Windows 8 buyers... aren't they the ones who will buy Media Center?

PT: Not anymore, Leo!

...

LP: What is the difference between Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro? Besides the fact that you can buy Windows Media Center?

PT: I believe it's about a hundred dollars.

LP: No, to add insult to injury, it's a hundred bucks more AND you still have to buy Windows Media Center!

...

LP: They're killing it! This is killing it.

MJF: That's kind of what they wanted to do, in a way.

...

PT: So here's my theory about Windows Media Center: obviously, they don't want to support this. I think if they put it in Windows, that opens them up to some level of support, and some level of support for a long time, right? Because the business oriented -- that Pro version of Windows is gonna fall under their business licensing thing, and it's gonna be... supported for a decade down the road. They don't want to do that for this Media Center thing. This is an end-of-life product.

* * *

(Later on, Thurrott speculates that by offering it as a separate pack, MS might get around the long-term business license support commitment.)

Any thoughts?

@JorgeA - it was clear to me from the outset that Microsoft wants to kill Windows Media Center, and Thurrott and Foley are saying the same.

All applications that run off Media Center will be history. I don't see many people upgrading to Windows 8 Pro just to get Media Center.

There will be many people that will still use Windows 7 and WMC, but it will be a slowly shrinking market.

Yeah, I'm afraid you're right. I posted that discussion because there's been some uncertainty in this thread about the eventual fate of WMC, and I thought people would find it relevant.

Ironically, for me this could have the effect of actually getting me to go out and buy a Win8 Pro + Media Pack combo to stretch out the WMC support period, when otherwise my inclination was to skip Win8 altogether. But not if they're going to treat the add-on pack as a separate "consumer" license with a shorter support cycle.

Nice blog, BTW -- to the point and well written.

I think it's clear as day now that MS have zero interest in MC on the PC anymore. Embedded is the way it's going, along with their XB360 cash-cow. Making it only available as a paid-for add-on in 8Pro will push it into obscurity, but done in a way where MS can say they haven't dropped it, and it's still there if you want to pay for it. Very sneaky. Obviously they're not spending any real time and money bringing it up to date either, even though it's begging for a Metro look'n'feel.

It really is a crying shame. MC is the hidden gem in Windows that so few have put any real effort into or probably even know about. It's a throw-back to the days of Bill Gates wanting to get Windows into the living room, but the end-result in Win7 was a highly polished front end that is still yet to be beaten in ease of use.

Until MS drop support for 7 and I no longer get guide updates, I'll be staying with 7MC for my main media center.

Something still doesn't seem right - why not just drop it? Why even go through the hassle of making it available? From the preview it seems obvious they've spent next to zero on any further development. We and they all know no one will pay for Pro and an add on to get WMC - all current users will just keep trucking along with W7. So why bother? Who would get upset if they just simply said the user base is too small to continue development?

I tried out W8 this weekend and I have to say I wasnt happy with it as an HTPC. They made it very difficult to do things with JUST a mouse. Normally I really like getting a new OS and welcome change since I get bored but W8 just made everything so much harder without keyboard shortcuts.

Myself and parents use 7 WMC. Other than MS no longer supplying the guides, is there any other aspect of WMC that requires MS supplying something (aside from break fixes or threat related updates)? Basically, if one were to guess, how long could 7 WMC be used before MS does or fails to do something that will mess it up? And do you think they would shut off the OTA program guides? That would really mess up my parents who use that feature a lot. Hopefully 7 WMS will be good for many more years, for those of us who do not want 8 pro?

If they shut off the guides in WMC7 that would suck so hopefully they support it for a while even if they kill of WMC7. The only thing I really use WMC for is live TV, DVR, and as a home base for my other apps like XBMC and Plex which do most of the heavy lifting. Although hopefully by the time MS kills WMC7, XBMC's PVR support will be past infancy and I could just switch over to using that. I haven't looked into it too much since WMC has been working so well for me but how does XBMC get guide data anyways being open-source free software?

If MS kills off WMC, that may spell doom to cablecard readers.

Since they are at least making it a paid option in Win8, we can rest assured that the guide data will be around for at least 6 more years. This should give us all time to find an alternative to MS.

Other than (as you said) supplying the guides, I don't think that there's any technical reason why a 7 WMC box shouldn't be able to keep running for as long as the computer holds up.

Assuming that the hardware doesn't break, the main thing is that we stop using an old computer because newer ones can do bigger and better things. I still have my first PC that runs on MS-DOS 1.25. It works great -- except that there isn't much of a reason to fire it up anymore because I've moved all my work and play over to newer machines.

But as long as your HTPC runs and the program guide is available, you should be fine as far as the eye can see. And even if that computer breaks, as long as people keep making computers that'll run Windows 7 and Microsoft accepts the license key, you should be able to install Win7 on the new machine and keep using WMC forever.

Even though WMC is only a very small percentage, that small percentage I'm sure represents a couple million people, at least? Do they really want to have a couple of million irate customers? I, for one, think that WMC is the cat's meow! I am completely satisfied with WMC7 (except for the very rare hicups and slowness).

What should they be worried about? That those "irate customers" will go buy a different operating system and office suite for their pcs? Yeah, I bet they're really sweating it.

Microsoft "clarifies" status of Media Center for Windows 8:



Blog post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2...windows-8.aspx

CFC

So you sort of will be able to get media center of you buy the non-pro version first. I guess the question is how much these packs will cost. Still seems like am odd way of doing things. Why not just make a paid 'wmc add-on', available to both pro and non-pro versions? In a way that's what they're doing, but they're making it unnecessarily confusing.