Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005: Feature and Performance Investigation
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 12, 2004 12:19 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
Online Spotlight
Originally introduced in MCE 2004, the Onlight Spotlight section of Media Center is a way to offer third party content to MCE PCs without breaking the Media Center interface.
While the theory is a sound one, there is a lack of quality control when it comes to the Online Spotlight experience. Not only does the interface for most of the Online Spotlight begin to look like a cheap Media Center knockoff but it's far too common to have to do something outside of the Media Center UI to complete a setup feature in one of the Online Spotlight applications.
For the most part, the Online
Spotlight applications are
just web pages
that are designed to be
viewed from within
the Media
Center
interface.
Through
the Online Spotlight you
can sign up for RSS feeds
to be
delivered to your
MCE
PC, purchase music through
Napster or even order movies
on demand.
The movies on demand features
are provided by three companies: Movielink
, CinemaNow
and interActual. Remember
that you're basically downloading these movies for a fee, so the quality
and the speed at which you download the movies are dependent on the provider
as well as your internet connection. It's obviously not as fast as cable
TV on demand services but is about on equal footing as far as quality goes in
the sense that you're not getting the highest quality video and anything
above and beyond the bare minimum 4:3 format and 2 channel audio isn't
usually provided. You're much better off recording your own movies (at
least they're free
this way) or renting a DVD.
Overall the Online Spotlight section of Media Center is interesting and it definitely has promise, but the fact that just about all of the interesting features of Online Spotlight are paid subscriber features and that the entire section itself feels like you've exited Media Center and entered a much less polished program ruin the experience.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
26 Comments
View All Comments
glennpratt - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
^ I thought the same thing... How could they have possibly thought that was a good idea?ViRGE - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
Ok, you know the world has gone downhill when even MS is throwing in one of those dancers...glennpratt - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
Yes it works with set top boxes, using an IR Blaster. Though my remote box only has ports for two IR Blasters... I guess having 3 set top boxes attached to the same computer would be overkill. I wonder if it supports 3 different sources like digital cable + DirecTV + OTA HD. That would be sweet. I may have to try that out if I ever get my grubby hands on 2005.haci - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
It looks like BeyondTV can handle 6 tuners just fine:http://www.snapstream.com/community/articles/medus...
It would be interesting to see how the CPU requirements under BeyonTV and Windows MCE compare while using hardware encoders.
I would have expected the requirements to be similar, since most of the work is done by the encoder card anyway, but the MCE review seems to imply high CPU utilization under MCE.
Would it be possible to do some sort of comparison?
louisb - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
Will this work with a digital cable set-top box? Or is there a tuner card thats works with digital cable?Cygni - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
On page 13: "The movies on demand features are provided by three companies: , and . "Man, thats the same company three times! They are dominating! heh.
The multituner support is a big step forward, and i cant believe how polished everything seems to be. My current rig doesnt have the unf (or the right tuners) to get into the MCE game just yet, but it certainly looks very appealing now.