Geek out time for Gregory. An article about Microsoft's new multimedia software got me thinking about computers as TVs and why I have issues with such things on computers.
Changing Channels, on the PC. Windows XP Media Center Edition is Microsoft's PC-based answer to digital video recorders like TiVo. But how well does it work? By David Pogue. [New York Times: Technology]
The article hits on a few things that caught my eye. The first of which is placement. Yeah, it's neat that you can have a device like the TiVo on your computer. But there are a lot of implications for that. First, the cable companies. They aren't going to give up their hold on things so easily. This is an issue with the TiVo also, but not as much of one.
The TiVo is designed to fit in with your current home entertainment system. It's the size of a standard stereo component. it has cabling to drop it into your video connections and even an IR blaster if your cable box can't be directly controlled by it. With a computer you'd have to either find someplace to put it right by your TV, or get a whole second cable box for it to control. Unfortunately, the cable companies seem to be quite resistant to the idea of you giving up those cable boxes. So it's potentially going to cost you some extra money each month to do.
The second issue for me is that with a TiVo it is a dedicated box. I don't have to worry that something else I am running will impact the programs I am recording. When I look at some of the games my friends are currently playing I can't see how one could assure that you wouldn't run into bandwidth issues. Especially when doing things like handling disk reads and writes while recording a show.
And, when it comes down to it, I just don't like watching things on a computer screen. I watch digisubs that way because I don't have any good way to watch them on TV (though I'm still eyeing that software for the PS2 that lets you). Now if someone were to take this software and incorporate it into a standalone box, they might have something. But then again, we already have TiVo and Replay out there (and don't forget the whole DRM and MS thing).
