Microsoft – The Future of the Living Room is NOT Windows

Signs of Media Center not being a windows product continue to appear and today’s article by Microsoft “The Future of the Living Room” pretty much says what everyone has been assuming – the connected living room will have nothing to do with Windows.

The article doesn’t say there will be no MediaCenter, but they might as well.  The focus for the future of TV, entertainment and the living room in Microsoft’s eyes are Xbox, Kinect and Bing!  You read that right, Bing.  Here’s a quote from the article:

As you can see, integration of products and services like Xbox, Kinect and Bing is at the heart of our strategy.

What do you think?  Is Microsoft abandoning Media Center for Windows and instead focusing on embedding some of those features in Xbox only?  Definitely a must-read for MediaCenter fans – The Future of the Living Room

Recording Video Gameplay -The Other Use for the Hauppauge HD-PVR

When the Hauppauge HD-PVR was announced over a year ago, the news was welcomed by HTPC enthusiasts everywhere as a way to avoid the draconian content protection schemes of the media companies, cable and satellite companies.  And the HD-PVR from Hauppauge has definitely become one of the key cogs in my home theater PC setup using SageTV.  But one of the most popular uses for these little HD-PVR boxes isn’t PVR, it’s recording video gameplay.

This video by “dizzydougtv” provides a tutorial on using the Hauppauge HD-PVR to record gameplay.

Now I think anyone watching me play videogames is a sure-fire way to put them to sleep – or at least laugh at my videogame performance.  But I know there is a very large number of videogamers using the HD-PVR to record their video gameplay.

Windows 7 Media Center Xbox 360 Extenders Down For Maintenance

If you're one of the many using an XBox360 as an extender with the Window 7 Media Center beta you likely have noticed your XBox360 can't access Windows Media Center today.  That's because Microsoft is performing scheduled maintenance on XBox Live which is required for the XBox360/MediaCenter use.

Microsoft provided many warnings on the web, via e-mail and on the Xbox360 dashboard

 

 

As their warning messages have said, XBox Live will be down for up to 24 hours so now would be a great time to step outside and enjoy the weather. 

Adam at theDigitalMediaZone is reporting that those who haven't haven’t installed the NXE update on their 360 should be unaffected by today’s down time.

I do empathize with those affected as it could definitely pull down that WAF a bit - especially after the digital transition debacle, but just remember that those of use affected are using a beta version of Media Center so we sort of signed up for this sort of thing until it releases from beta.

I wonder if XBox Live will be required for the XBox360 and MediaCenter once it leaves beta though.

via DigitalMediaZone

More information at this GreenButton Thread and some grumblings in this GreenButton Thread