Niall Ginsburg’s Mobilewares Blog has news that the Windows Media Center team has released the RTM version of the Windows Media Center Software Development Kit 6.0 for Windows 7.
Developers can get the download here and leave feedback at MediaCenter Sandbox
Important notes for Media Center users & developers – Death of MCPL
The new API added no new features to speak of. In the words of Niall Ginsbourg:
“All in all - this SDK is a big disappointment for developers – as while the Windows 7 platform and new versions of Media Center are great products (and a big improvements over Vista) – the minimal API changes completely missed out on taking advantage some of any of great new features (ie. no support for Multi Touch, no support for the new EPG database, etc and the list goes on.. ). It’s a laundry list of what ‘could have been’…”
Needless to say there’s not a lot to be excited about in the new SDK for Windows 7. Niall goes on to talk about what he see’s as the death of MCPL (Media Center Presentation Layer) as what had been expected to be a “very promising dev platform” during the days of the Vista beta.
Some Positives – EPG capabilities
Niall mentions that the new MXF spec and “loadmxf” functioanlity do add some nice capabilities for using the Media Center EPG (TV Guide) database. But the SDK doesn’t add API hooks or even take advantage of the new functionality.
Developer Concerns for the Direction of Media Center
Niall finishes by showing his disappointment (to say the least) with the direction of Media Center Development as a whole – especially as it concerns developers
“…going forward - I’m not sure where things are heading for Windows 8 with Media Center Development as a whole - and it’s looking unlikely that MCPL will ever be touched again with the new ‘TV on your PC’ push (rather than ‘PC’ or ‘Extender on your TV’ line) – and almost complete lack of engagement with the community of MCPL developers from the Extensibility team…”
. While much of the post is pretty technical for the non-developer type, I think it has some very interesting commentary from a well-known Media Center developer.
