Thursday, January 08, 2009

Media Center Left Out of CES Keynote Address by Microsoft

isdixon

Microsoft continues to put very little marketing focus on their HTPC product built into their operating system.  In yesterday's keynote address it seems Microsoft mentioned the "digital home vision", they mostly left Media Center out of the talk - no videos, screen-shots or much talk about Media Center.  Sure, Windows 7 (beta available tomorrow, 1/9/2009) is their main new product coming soon, but Media Center is part of that OS product and continuing to ignore Media Center because of lack of perceived interest just begins to be a self fulfilling prophesy.

I know they have some news to talk about with Media Center - perhaps they just can't talk about those things yet.  But you'd think they would want to show at least a few screen-shots and mention the new features of Windows 7 Media Center.  Disappointing to say the least.  I'm not the only one disappointed, the screen-grab at the top of this post is from the twitter feed of Ian Dixon, a very popular Media Center enthusiast. 

Another Media Center fan, Chris Lanier has a another write-up on the lack of Media Center in the Microsoft keynote address.

There have been some interesting CES news items related to Media Center extenders and integration into TVs etc, but I'm hoping Microsoft will have more to say about Media Center in the coming days.