Where are we now?

With all the questions about Vista I thought it might be interesting to talk about where we are in the project and to see if there were things you were hoping to see.

Right now we're in a bug fixing phase. That means we are working on closing down as many bugs as possible in the product based upon our schedule. A lot of times this is called stabilization. Not very glamorous - but the most important part of a project in my opinion.

During this phase, however, we get to a point where individual teams start wanting to make changes to features that are complete, almost complete or adding new features. This is called a "DCR" or Design Change Request. Here is the fundamental tension that comes up in software management, and I'd assume in most projects. The tension is simply "Do you potentially sacrifice products quality for additional features?"

Like most things the answer is not simple. Often times we get market forces or partner companies requiring changes so our business depends upon a DCR. Other times our customers give us feedback (through usability groups or basic feedback like a blog) and we take that seriously. Sometimes we get major bug fixes or internal partner teams who need us to do work for them. And finally we just have last minute ideas.

Every time a DCR comes up it goes through a process (not glamorous either, but necessary). This process helps us evaluate a basic risk vs. reward scenario.

For example: With the recent Update Rollup 2 release I got a last minute request from one of our PMs to add functionality to down sample DVD playback to 480p when media center is hooked up via component connections. The basic problem we face is that macrovision (the DVD copy protection program) invokes when a DVD is played back at too high a resolution over an analog connection (this doesn't apply to VGA or DVI or HDMI).

The customer impact was clear. Some of our customers will not be able to play DVDs at higher resolution with Media Centers hooked up through component. Seems obvious enough that we should fix the issue -right? Well not necessarily. When the problem and solution were brought to my attention the project was about a month away from shipping. At that point we were essentially done and the test teams were in their final phases of testing. The risk starts going through the roof with every fix you take at that point.

So the question then became - how many people are really using component connections to their TVs and how many of those people are running at higher then 480p and how many of those people will actually watch DVDs through media center? The answer was a pretty small number. So the risk to all our customers for the benefit of just a few didn't seem worthwhile.

In the end I strongly feel that features are less important than stability. I’d rather see us do our core features really well (TV, music, photos, video, etc) then start adding things that a majority of customers my or may not want or need. Not to say that I don’t love features and think they’re important – just not as important as a rock solid product. The two aren’t always related, but whenever you make changes the risk to stability goes up.

All right - interactive part. What would you like to see in Media Center? Assume that Vista Media Center is the same a XP Media Center (it isn't). What are you hoping to see come out or would love to have?

Also would you sacrifice some stability for more features?

See you in the comments....

Comments

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2005
  Rock solid failure resiliency and stability is number one for me. A feature I am looking forward to in WinFS is the ability to right click on a important directory such as My Documents etc. and make it automatically be copied and constantly mirrored onto another disk drive from then on (sort of like RAID but selectively on directories).. so if my HD fails from any point from then on I can recover all my stuff without any issues.
  
• Anonymous
  October 24, 2005
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• Anonymous
  October 24, 2005
  Voice control / recognition. That is the ability to use a remote that has a mic or whatever and press a button (or say a rarely used trigger word) and then change to the channel (by saying the raw channel number, or the word NBC, ESPN, Discovery etc) I want. If it is hard to recognize certain words, it should be able to understand spelling out.
  
  Maybe u can do it for music too (playlists or numbers or "media center, skip" etc. should be easier to recognize than songs so it would be a start).
  
• Anonymous
  October 24, 2005
  Watch DVDs using my MCE....oh, sorry your not going to fix that....
• Anonymous
  October 24, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  October 24, 2005
  Let's see on all these comments (they came fast). I'll respond over time here - but I have some initial thoughts.
  
  1. Syncing - yes I agree. I'd love to have automatic mirroring onto another driver or comptuer or even the web. We have something started called <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e0fc1154-c975-4814-9649-cce41af06eb7&DisplayLang=en">SyncToy</a>. I've used it and it is a start - but not a complete solution.
  2. I've heard that we might be working on some interesting TV storage solutions, but I haven't seen anything yet. I do know that with the DVD changer you'll be able to set shows to "archive" to a DVD-RAM or other DVD-R disc.
  3. Check out Matt Goyer's Blog for how to use MyDVDs for ripped movies. Cool but not automatic. HD-DVD is supposed to support this for all movies as part of the design but I don't know when Media Center will....
  4. Total speculation on my part (and I mean total) but I think IP TV will bring in software tuning. I'm excited to see what Media Center does with it.
  5. Extenders/XBOX Extender - XBOX 360 rocks and solves almost all the issues listed. Very, very cool stuff.
  6. Voice control - check out "one voice" as a possible solution here. I saw them at a conference a few weeks ago and it seemed to work well.
  7. Schedule FM Recording - I wish, I really do. Maybe soon
  8. Streaming media - check www.thegreenbutton.com for an add-in that does this. I think it is called "My Media." I used it for a bit...
  9. Muting TV and using FM audio would be great. I can't stand the Mariner's announcers and don't get me started on Marv Albert. :)
  
  Keep them coming.... :)
• Anonymous
  October 24, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  October 24, 2005
  MPEG-4 Support (Divx and Xvid) for the Extenders- PLEASE!
• Anonymous
  October 24, 2005
  Here's the top of my wish list:
  
  - PDC (for us European users without more than two or three HDTV until sometime around 2009)... My old $50 VCR has this!!! I hate having to record the following two shows after the plannen NFL broadcast, just to be sure that I don't miss the final touchdown.
  
  - A decent SDK so that I can have the same cool animations that MCE has. The HTML-stuff looks horrible...
  
  - A decent radio part. Only 9 channels... Come on! And a way to name these channels! Here in Denmark (where I'm from - and I think this goes for all of Europe) no one remembers the frequency a radio channel has - it can be very different from city to city... I want to be able to call my station # 1 eg. "Sky Radio".
  And I want to be able to add Internet radio and DAB as well... And please, please add a Guide for the radio part (I'm dreaming aren't I...) or at the very least, let me schedule radio recordings...
  
  - A better way to edit music info... All the properties found in WMP should be editable via MCE - especially now the the cool MCE keyboard is out!
  
  Kind regards,
  Kenneth (Denmark)
• Anonymous
  October 24, 2005
  Just wondering what features did Media Center customers gain that was so important in Rollup 2 that the DRM stability was sacrificed and now causes copy protection errors for many users?
  
  Did customers actually request additional CGMS/A filtering, COPP mechanisms, or new DRM engines?
  
  It sure seems like stability took a back seat to pleasing Microsoft customers that are requesting DRM additions.
• Anonymous
  October 24, 2005

1. HDTV via a cable card
   if not possible, then...
   2. QAM tuning. The cards are already out there. Just let me at a minimum tune my local channels via my cable provider so I don't have to purchase some rabbit ears. QAM tuning would also allow MCE to capture surround sound (or at least I hope it would, I could then have surround sound with Battlestar Galactica, etc.)
   3. Better sorting/filtering of music, photos and probably DVDs (if we're going to be allowed to rip them). I should be able to hit 1 through 5 on my remote while listening to music or viewing photos for ratings...
   4. Unrelated to MCE, but Microsoft should release a Home server edition like Small Business Server. It would have IIS, a slimmed down Exchange and SQL server. Limit the Exchange IS and SQL DB to 3 gigs or something. Put some home automation software on it as well. Limit it to five named accounts or something... The MCE machine would just be part of the domain.

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2005

1. Multi zone audio capability - if you have two soundacrds (e.g. onboard sound + add in sound card_ be able to output two different sources. This would be huge!
   2. Abilty to control MCE from another PC.

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2005
  PDC would be very cool. We were just talking about that the other day. I wish US broadcasters would have it...
  
  My thought is that since it isn't in the US this hasn't be done yet. Not to say Media Center doesn't care about international (we do - and it was one of the driving forces behind Rollup 2) but I don't know if enough of our customers have pushed for the feature. We have talke about it though.
  
  SDK will be better for Vista. You should have access to lots of effects, etc. My ultimate dream, and a project I started a bit ago then handed off, was to have an Visual Studio Digital Media Edition, which would include the MCE SDK with intellisense, etc.
  
  Radio naming is on the list of things that will hopefully be here in Vista.
  
  Don't get me started on Music editing. I don't like it at all and wish we could do better. I haven't looked yet in Vista.
  
  Per James who is clearly upset - I feel your pain. I didn't want to change DRM either, but part of our product is to protect content providers. They are also our customers. DRM is complex but we did test is quite a bit and I hate to hear that you're having issues. Can you give me more details?
  
  Finally the cable card request is something I'm hoping to see soon. See a couple of posts up about DVD ripping.
  
  Sorting and rating can certainly use work.
  
  Home server - very cool. I'd love to see that as all my media is on a server at home and it is still way too much hand work. I'm all about automation.
• Anonymous
  October 24, 2005

1. Native Digital TV support.
   - DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) with CI (common interface) support. DVB-C, S & T.
   - HDTV & Cable card.
   
   With this you can compete with cable companies DVR... And no more Tivo.
   
   2. Automatic (transparent) Game installation. Completely integrated in MCE (one-click uninstall). Not an add-on as Discover Console but a truly native part of the system. Games are important ! Hope XNA is no vapourware (that Xbox 360 and PC are sharing controls is great).
   
   With this you can compete against video game console.
   
   3. Push harder on content owner. Faire-use is important.
   
   With this you get the users ;)
   
   
   Others.
   
   MCE not as a front-end for Windows (XP, Vista) but as the Operating System.
   
   Windows Hotfixes, Video Drivers etc… Silent and transparent installation or done simply using your Media Center.
   
   Skinned MCE.
   
   Better integration of portable devices (mp3 players…). Move playlists on the fly etc..
   

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2005
  To address James' comment that he brought up...
  
  - If protected music works, but protected TV doesn't - try new drivers (TV tuner and video card while you're at it)
  
  - If neither protected music nor protected TV works - try the steps outlined here: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=891664
• Anonymous
  October 24, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  October 24, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  October 24, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  October 24, 2005
  To be clear - the issue I was talking about was down-converting a signal from 720p/1080i/1080p. The change was to down-convert to 480p.
  
  However I would like to see some upconverting. What decoder are you using? You might be able to get some of that through one of the DVD decoders. I didn't know that XBOX 360 didn't up-convert to 720p or above. I must not be paying enough attention as I'm happy with DVD playback on my 1080p LCD.
  
  Per the post abvoe from captain_caveman2k - what is the bug you're seeing on channels being lost? Is that on initial install after you added channels manually or something else?
  
  Some of your other requests have been discussed.
  
  Also so everyone knows - I'm sending this blog post on to my team so we can look through your suggestions to keep them coming!
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  I would very much like to see a manual for the product. How can you expect "normal" users to buy this product if there isnt a manual??
  
  I am loosing my radio stations almost once a week, so that part would be great to get fixed.
  
  I am also getting a bluescreen twice a month. MCE does what it should but it just bluescreens when trying to standby and restarts.
  
  when you introduce xbox360's as extenders I believe that you should make a mce server edition. One that can handle all the features that a server version should include. Backup, rollover when recording to another drive etc..
  
  Jeppe
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  Hi David,
  
  The loss of channels from the EPG only appears to effect DVB-T users and generally happens once or twice a month.
  
  We have been discussing it on TGB for some time now and from what I can remember it was mentioned in an expert chat transcript or newsgroup as a known problem.
  
  Basically, half a dozen channels loose their listing data in the EPG so "No data available" is displayed and we have to manually "Add listing to guide" to tie up the broadcast channel with the EPG data in order to fix the problem.
  
  It's one of those very frustrating bugs and you could say that we seem to cope with it as long as someone is around the MCE machine to fix it when it happens - unfortunately if you are on holiday / vacation when it happens then your scheduled recordings don't record and there is nothing you can do about it :(
  
  I know this is a very wooly bug report and from a project manager's and software engineer's point of view doesn't give you much to go on. As such the following TGB threads may be of some use:
  
  http://www.thegreenbutton.com/community/shwmessage.aspx?forumid=41&messageid=106934
  http://www.thegreenbutton.com/community/shwmessage.aspx?ForumID=41&MessageID=96959
  
  If there is anything I can do to help such as send log files etc... please let me know. I have the same username of TGB and can be PM'ed / e-mailed / IM'ed.
  
  Thanks again to you and your team for listening.
  
  Kind Regards
  
  Steve
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
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• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005

0. Stability! RU2 seems to have helped.
   1) Support for digital and HD cable. I hate having intermittant signal problems due to rooftop HD ant and signal problems due to splitting my cable. I wish I had DiscoveryHD, ESPNHD, etc.
   2) Full HD Subchannel directory support! PITA that I can get a valid listing for PBS subchannels.
   3) PVR functionality for radio. Since I don't listen to radio much via MCE, this is not a biggie. But I don't see the big deal with implementing it. Easy for me to say. :)
   

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  Separate touchscreen display capability with the ability to handle separate resolutions. This may not be directly handled within MCE, but may be something that the video card manuf. have to address.
  
  More and more HTPCs are starting to have touchscreens available which can be quite useful as you don't have to turn on the TV to access the PC, but the problem is that the resolution for the touchscreen has to match the TV which, if you have an HDTV can cause problems.
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  DVB-MHP like feature:
  When you get a dual display card you can watch your TV while you are, for example, writing this comment. But if your son takes the remote control to change channel then you are loosing the focus on the monitor: this prevent from sharing a MCE PC for office and entertainment simultaneously by two different family members. So I propose to change this exclusive way MCE application is managing input events into an org.dvb.event way (sharing between zapper application and xlet)
  
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  Thanks again for all the comments. I'll continue to pass them on to the Media Center team.
  
  There are so many here that I can't keep up. :)
  
  Clearly Cable Card is a big deal.
  I also think the network robustness would be good.
  
  I had a talk with one of our people working on TV today and let him know about the requests here as well.
  
  Also stay tuned for multi-zone audio. I've heard rumors (all I've heard) but that would be cool.
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  Here is what we need in the new version:
  
  # 1& #2) satellite and cable HDTV
  # 3) much better handling of large digital media libraries, esp. pictures and music files
  # 4) making better use of existing meta-data in those media libraries (esp. EXIF and IPTC information in picture files)
  # 5) allow usage of media files irrespective of their physical storage. E.g. let me create a slide show on the fly, with all pictures carrying a certain IPTC tag; and allow a calendar view (similar to Adobe Photoshop Album) of pictures
  # 6) ability to join an AD domain
  # 7) offer randomized playlists for video clips. I am collecting single-song music videos (MTV style), and would like to create party playlists with these
  # 8) offer all necessary system administration tools from within the 10' interface. Currently I am esp. missing the "defrag" function
  # 9) provide the MSN Messenger video-conferencing facility from within MCE
  # 10) instead of trying to offer all things to all people, make it much easier to application programmers to offer an alternate 10' interface to their packages. Example: instead of offering red-eye correction on pictures, I would love to have an MCE interface to Adobe Photoshop Elements (at least to the Album and the "instant fix" sections);
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005

1. Clean and fast screens
   2. Quick reaction to commands from remote, mouse,and keyboard
   3. Speed over cute
   4. Worthwhile Spotlight "stuff"

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  Per the request from captain_caveman2k.
  
  We know about the guide issue and we're investigating. That's all the info I have so far...
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  A Must:
  1. stability (it is going to be CE Product)
  2. satellite and cable HDTV
  
  NEW FEATURES
  1.Multi zone audio
  2. PIP(PICTURE IN PICTURE)
  3. Build in true network aware Client/Server Media center, Media servers. EX. build in shared recorded tv,my dvds,etc
  4.MAYBE FRONTEND MCE ONLY EDITION.Not on XP,VISTA, but embedded.Take the Desktop O.S out (because people see windows desktop they think computer at work at home and say i don't want that in living room.aka viruses,spam popups,crashes)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  New feature:
  - Ability to record and view TV show on mapped network drive
  - View ripped DVD on extender
  
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  #1. DirectTV HD Support. I live in Redmond and MDM still does not offer HD Cable.
  
  #2. Remote Scheduling
  
  #3. Integrate SlingBox like remote viewing.
  
  #4. PocketPC Based Remote software integrated via WiFi or Bluetooth.
  
  Thanks,
  
  Chris
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  Multiple tuner spaces - so that dvb-t can work with analogue tuner cards, and dvb-t can work with FM radio !!! Seriously - this is just basic stuff !!!!
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  One of my biggest bugbears is the inability to include music video clips in a playlist and have them automatically played as video clips. Not a difficult one I would have thought!
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  Apologies if this stuff I mention is not about your product. I'm not great on the technical side, but these are some simple? things I'd love to see.
  
  1. Record TV in a different format to DVR-MS. The files are just too big. Most the time I can convert shows to an .avi file with little obvious loss of quality and a much smaller file. This is on analogue, by the way.
  
  2. When I have programmed a TV show to record, and the show starts late, I want to be able to edit the end time for the recording, otherwise I'm going to miss the end of my shows. Don't know about around the world, but shows often start late in Australia. To counteract this I have to anticipate a late start and end up sometimes recording 20 min too much of a show, hence increasing the file size.
  
  3. Support for Australian HDTV, including sound. I've heard there is an issue with capturing the audio, which is apparently in AC3 format? Not sure of the technical details on that one.
  
  4. Inbuilt software to allow editing of Recorded TV. I currently use dCut, which is great, but the less add-ons the better IMO.
  
  5. A working and simple way to burn Recorded TV to a DVD that can be watched on other DVD players.
  
  Thanks
  I'll be interested to see what you have to say. And thanks so much for letting us be heard. I hope you can integrate as much as is possible to make MCE as good as it can be.
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  THINK APPLE!!!! SIMPLIFY !!!!!
  
  First Biggest problems with MCE 2005 is how difficult it is to navigate. I have a collection of over 1000 CDs perfectly tagged, all with Album covers. MCE 2005 makes it very difficult to navigate. For example while in Music -> Album Menu press a letter in the remote, MCE takes you randomly to a different letter.....
  
  Second biggest problem: PERFORMANCE!! Having a large library of CDs, photos, videos.. Menu refresh is extremely slow. Both Media Center 2005 and Media Center extender are barely usable....
  
  For microsoft to dominate the Media hub space in our connected homes, They need to hire somebody who thinks about USABILITY and SIMPLICITY. Their approach is too square
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  I know these have been mentioned, but I feel they are worth repeating:
  1. Support for more than 2 analog tuners simultaneously. I would like to do 4 analog.
  2. Support for recording to multiple hard drives.
  3. When a recorded show is archived to a seperate hard drive you must view it from My Videos and you lose all the metadata about the show. I suppose if you do #2 this is less important, but I would like to always see the metadata in My Videos.
  
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  I would like to have Picture-in-Picture available for users with multiple tuners.
  
  Oz
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  Would be a lot more usedul for me, if you could schedule wake from standby and watch a specific channel. Eg, wake up to watch the news channel Monday to Friday at 7am.
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  XBOX (pre-360) extender support in Australia.
  DVB-T signal strength/quality indicator
  
  
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  
  - PIP support
  - Multiple tuner Spaces. Mediaportal can mix and match analog and digital, why can't a for profit company do it?
  - Support for non-standard video content (ie Xvid/divx) on extenders. I noticed you havn't addressed this comment once yet, it would seem everyone dodges this one. Alot of customers could be lost on this one, as a number of other free options are catching up and will offer this support.
  - Skinning Support for individuality.
  - Better/faster handling of music library
  
  Cheers
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005

1. Multi room audio
   
   2. Upscaling playback
   
   3. Browsing pictures by time, ala Photoshop Elements (ie use page down to jump month by month)
   
   4. Option to stop mce creating snapshot images of the video files in My Videos (as it makes my service very slow and jerky even through it's running video off a server over gigabit ethernet, except with read only access to save anyone deleting it)

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  October 26, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  October 26, 2005
  Ability to connect to other media centers for viewing. I have 2 media centers in my home. One in the family room and one in the office. It would be nice to watch things from the other media center without using an extender. Extenders don't offer the same functionality as a whole new media center pc.
• Anonymous
  October 26, 2005
  Mark shows by who selected to record it, or by who watches it.
  
  My Wife and I both record shows/series. Can they be color coded or marked some other way for who recorded it? And Sort based on that?
  
  Also, there are shows we both like, but are not always able to watch together. I'd really like to know if she has watched it, so I know I can delete it when I'm done watching it.
  
• Anonymous
  October 26, 2005
  Thanks again everyone for all your comments. The are just too many for me to get through and actually do my job. :) I have another post I'm working on that will move on with a lot of this info so check back soon.
• Anonymous
  October 26, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  October 26, 2005
  
  Make resolution changes easier. We should be able to set a default font, icon, and even thumbnail size at each screen resolution. Options for managing a desktop spanned across multiple monitors would be nice, a la Nvidia's desktop manager app without two dozen submenus and useless tweaks.
  Under XP, my primary monitor is set at 1280x1024. My second and third monitors are 1024x768 and TV. Since aero-glass can scale anyway, the bottom and top of all monitors should be aligned, not mismatched with a bunch of desktop area I can't see.
  
• Anonymous
  October 26, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  October 27, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  October 27, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  October 27, 2005
  Provide a way for multiple Windows PCs in a home to share content with one another automatically and have each other's digial library populated by what's available on the network.
  
  I just published an article on the topic:
  "Windows Vista MCE Needs to Take a Page from Mediabolic's Playbook"
  http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/1565/windows_vista_mce
• Anonymous
  October 27, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  October 28, 2005

1. Control MCE from another PC via Web Interface
   
   2) Play random albums from a genre but maintain the track order within the album

• Anonymous
  October 28, 2005
  Regarding Ben Lambert's comments about making playlists using mood information, support for this in MCE would be great. Sometimes you don't want to construct a manual playlist and a random list often produces a mix that puts totally different songs next to each other.
  
  I have been using a program called MusicMagicMixer for a while which does a similar thing. It analyses all the songs for their musical style and then when you select a song/album/artist it can create a playlist of similar songs. You can also create moods and make playlists based on these. I have been very surprised at how good these mixes turn out to be. I think they have a plugin for Winamp so it looks like it could be integrated into MCE, the web site is:
  
  http://www.predixis.biz/

• Anonymous
  October 28, 2005
  Here's a quick and easy one; when using the Guide, can we see the day of the week on screen, not just the date? I'm forever trying to work out what day I'm looking at when I browse forward.

• Anonymous
  October 28, 2005
  
  1) Interface to internet radio.
  
  2) My Music to include video (for music clips) too! When playing an audio only file then show visualisation. Can choose to play audio only, video only or mixed (e.g. via genre).
  
  3) Automatically go back to launching menu rather than show mini menu at the end of video playback. At least take out the delete option - I dont want my kids accidentally deleting something.
  
  4) "MCE mode" bootup option that only loads the essential stuff required to use MCE so that I dont have to wait for the 500 services to load up that I will never use.
  
  5) Ability to re-order and hide main menu items.
  
  6) Scanning for new TV services doesnt cause me to have to reedit my channels.
  
  7) Configurable automatic before and after scheduled EPG time for recording of TV shows. My local stations are hopeless at showing things on time.
  
  8) My wife is a University lecture and legally allowed to record and display TV shows for teaching/research purposes. It would be nice to have a mechanism for doing this (e.g. ability to play on one other device - laptop for instance).
  
  9) Reset mode (e.g. based on System Restore) that can reset back to a restore point for a certain amount of time and also back to the original installation.
  
  10) Automatic backup/synchronisation to USB device as it is detected. All my family photos and video are on the MCE and it would be nice to just be able to plug in the external drive and have it automatically synchronised rather than the manual method I have to do now.

• Anonymous
  October 28, 2005
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 29, 2005
  Here are some ideas with priorities:
  - P0: HDTV (cable) support.
  - P0: Better music support. Currently managing my collection of mp3s is pretty much impossible. 90% of them are missing proper ID3 tags, I ended up with with about only 1.5 songs per one album displayed in MCE. It's such a mess. I can't control it anymore, and I want something to fix my music collection (the current autogeneration of ID3 tags seems to fail me all the time. Can't this be fixed?)
  - P2: I want to be able to create playlists by checking boxes next to several songs. Right now creating playlists is nearly impossible (too many clicks)
  - P1: I'd like to know who watched a particular show (there are two people in my house that watch recorded shows and sometimes it's hard to tell whether my roommate watched it and therefore if it can be deleted)
  - P0: I want to be able to start slideshows in any place (not always from the beginning)
  - P0: when I am in a photo album and press back I want the focus to return to the photo album I was just looking at, not to the beginning of the list
  - P1: When I watch photos on my widescreen TV I want the option to have them always zoomed in to fit my screen
  - P1: a simple way of sharing my photo and music collection with other computers in my house (I want to play music upstairs when I shower, I want to play music downstairs when I eat breakfast)
  - P0: Better music search (currently its useless because its so slow)
  - P0: Pre-cache photo album thumbnails so that it doesn't take media center so long to switch to the music view (it's also silly that it renders them always from scratch)
  - P0: Fix the problem of the same show getting recorded multiple times (Daily Show on comedy central is a great example)
  - P2: Make the TV guide more attractive. It's currently very hard to discover new and iteresting shows (and since I skip commercials I don't know whats worth to watch in the future)
  - P2: undelete functionality (several times I pressed the delete button too fast)
  - P2: voice control (when I cook it's hard to use the remote)

• Anonymous
  October 30, 2005
  This isn't MCE but..
  
  
  Windows Vista wanted features:
  
  
  Auto-Select current directory as default when you go up 1 dir.
  
  Unload Windows and unneeded services from memory when you launch a fullscreen app. (configure in properties dialog)
  
  Download manager in IE7 with pause and restoration after shutdown.
  
  Set Timeline for all thumbnails of videos instead of just black from the start of a movie.
  
  Binary saving for Notepad.
  
  Open With and Edit for EXE, COM etc.. files with notepad.
  
  Multiple clipboard capabability.
  
  Processor Temperature in Task Manager.
  
  My Video on Start Menu.

• Anonymous
  November 03, 2005
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 03, 2005
  I'd like to see:
  
  * Support for analog/digital tuners at the same time (and ability to map specific channels to tuners).
  * Ability to fast forward/rewind DivX/XVid.
  * Better/easier support for Real Media and QuickTime.
  * My Music performance increase.
  * Now/Next (mini-EPG) when switching channels.
  * Separate EPG/list for DVB-T radio stations.
  * Overhauled radio application with channel names, categories and extra presets.
  

• Anonymous
  November 05, 2005
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 06, 2005
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 08, 2005
  Sacrifice stability? That has to be the number ONE priority. That and not losing the EPG...
  
  1) Fix the stupid dual tuner feature whereby if you're recording consecutive programs on the same channel it uses both tuners to record the padding overlap, so you can't watch another channel during this 7 minute period. That's just poor testing. I can't believe they let that slip through. And still let it slip through in Rollup 2.
  
  2) DVB-T subtitles. Most of my family is deaf and we spend more time watching "normal" TV that has subtitles. Really, it's not that complicated. If MediaPortal, a free product, can do it, why haven't the combined mighty brains of the multi-billion dollar Microsoft manage to figure it out yet ?
  
  Sorry to rant, but they are just two things that really annoy me about MCE and you don't often get the chance to voice things to MS!
  
  Kashoo!

• Anonymous
  November 08, 2005
  Just to let everyone know that I'm still watching this thread. The feedback is really great.

• Anonymous
  November 10, 2005
  It would be very nice to be able to adjust aspect ratio realtime like mediaplyer classic using the numpad keys. Best would be to assign the direction keys on the ms remote controll for that purpose.
  
  This goes for all video media off course.
  
  
  

• Anonymous
  November 10, 2005
  I'll be installing MCE2K5 this weekend followed by MythTV. I must say that 55 gigs of MP3s make me a little nervous re:MS.

• Anonymous
  November 10, 2005
  I just love the Media Center (live in sweden), but the music section is soo bad, please replace it! And it would be cool if it would be possible to change the start page of media center, to nice pictures (think front row)
  
  Good job!!!!!!!

• Anonymous
  November 22, 2005
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 22, 2005
  First, I would like multi monitor support. I can run MCE in full screen on my second monitor, but it keeps stealing the mouse focus!! Second, I would also like to be able to resize the window larger. Why is there a locked max size anyway? Third, I would like to be able to specify more than one drive/path to record to. Spilling over to the other paths as needed. I know I can stripe drives, but that isn't a good solution. Also, PLEASE add xvid/divx post encoding support. It will save a lot of space.

• Anonymous
  December 04, 2005
  I would like to see all of the functionality inherent in the program itself, not having to rely on third party vendors to complete the product, case in point: having to deal with compression requiring additional software to be installed in order to compress video clips that will not fit on a dvd. I purchased a product that I believed to be somewhat complete and did not ask to have to do business with ie sonic to complete the task.
  If other programs are required to complete the media experience in media center please state them up front or provide a guide to ensure customers know what additional resources will be required to media center's advirtised capabilities. In otherwords, yea you can record tv to dvd only if it fits the disk, if it does not and is longer you need additional software.

• Anonymous
  December 27, 2005
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  December 27, 2005
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  December 30, 2005
  Firewire support, the IR blaster is a bridge solution and not everybody will use cable card initially. Usage of MCE functionality in the current installed base seems to be an issue beyond the core group of users.
  
  Optional automatic recording of television/movies based on past recording/viewing data, a la Television. Some of the data is already there within the Movies section of Television. If you really wanted to nail it you could implement a rating system a la Netflix of the programs that MCE recorded automatically and you could go further and ask MCE users to rate the television/movies that they selected themselves to further refine suggestions. You could even do something like Amazon suggestions, "viewers who liked this program also liked this program”.
  
  I think the DVR capabilities of MCE should be paramount given the increasing competition from generic versions from the Cable/Sat companies plus Apple's Front Row. MCE is the best product of its kind on the market and it needs to stay that way to get people to use it versus less expensive and less functional alternatives.
  

• Anonymous
  January 02, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 08, 2006
  Stability definitely.
  
  Record by keyword and series etc is nice but I like to watch films. It is really painful to filter the guide by all films and trawl through. As I cannot just select record all films as there would be no space.
  
  It would be nice to be presented with a list of all of the films until the end of the guide which match certian criteria such as:
  
  number of stars (rating)
  age (i.e. not older than)
  category (i.e. action)
  showing time (i.e. display if on between 5pm and 3am)
  
  I think that this would be part of the guide options, i.e. avanced record. I see a button taking you to a screen with the list of films as buttons. The bottom part of the screen is text to give the currently focused button i.e. films details so that you can decide whether to record it or not, clicking the button schedules it for recording, clicking again unschedules.
  If there are more films than room on the top half there would be the standard arrows for item x of y.
  
  I am trying to write this as an addin but am having to majorly jump through hoops, there is no support for getting the guide data so I have to use 3rd party data, no support for the look and feel of mce.
  
  This would not have to be limited to films, it could be good to be presented with a list of programs that match criteria to choose rather than just recording everything.
  
  
  Also ability to use the IR blasters to learn a sequence of commands (i.e. to turn on TV and change to av channel (3 presses for me)) because I use the TV button for the amp.

• Anonymous
  January 09, 2006
  Considering that the Vista version of MCE will have WinFX installed by default, it would cool if WF was utilized... especially the rules. I'd love to see rules based recording priorities. For example:
  
  1. I want to set up movies to record in the future that aren't in the guide yet (which you can do now), but only on specific channels. Pay channels only, like HBO, but not TBS, Spike, etc., that edits for television and adds commercials.
  
  2. I want to have it automatically record all new TV pilot/premiere shows on specific networks.
  
  And expose the rule sets so people can write their own fancy rules editor.
  
  I also want a better interface for the darned priority adjustment. Where the heck is that info stored? The current one stinks when you have several hundred items to worry about (remember the future movies? That's all stored in the same place).

• Anonymous
  January 14, 2006
  Given my bad experience with Rollup 2 update, I have to say that stability must be #1 -- though since I only use MCE on my desktop for occasional (not main living room) use, then I don't need consumer electronics levels of stability myself.
  
  RDS with radio scheduling would make the inclusion of radio much more useful -- even some US stations have RDS these days. Some level of integration with internet radio stations would make the experience even better.
  
  I would also like to go straight into the Guide from the home screen -- I frequently don't want to pick up the remote (I'm using my desktop most of the time remember), and it's annoying to hit My TV first and then Guide -- I would put a Guide in the main menu, or to the left of the movies button in the My TV list.
  
  And while the UI is universally praised, and I'm ok with it in general myself, I do find it weird that the DVD menu is so far away from My TV -- I would expect these to be adjacent, at least! In my mental model, DVDs are much more closely associated with TV than anything else on the list.
  
  Why doesn't My DVDs cache the AMG info of all the DVDs I ever watch on MCE too? I don't expect to store my DVDs on MCE, but I would like to have MCE catalog them. That would be useful.

• Anonymous
  January 25, 2006
  The comment has been removed

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