Fall 11 Xbox Dasboard Update.

[Dunks517]

Good to be back so to speak

There have been a couple of discussions on Twitter regarding the possible absence of the Media Center Extender functionality from the Fall 11 XBox dashboard update. For one, I do hope that it is still there as I have 3 360s around the house serving up my entertainment fare. Has anyone seen anything to confirm or deny this? I tweeted @majornelson & @xbox a couple of times but they have not deemed my question good enough to reply (perhaps if I was asking about a crap arcade game then they would). If MS have dropped this in order to push their iptv offerings then it will be the last straw for myself and I will up sticks and bugger off to Plex land!

Cheers

Duncs

[StumpyBloke]

Hi Duncs! Sorry, do you mean there are rumours that this years xbox update will actually remove Media Center Extender functionality?!

I would be gobsmacked if that happened and if I were a betting stump I would bet against that happening!

[STC]

Oo I could just imagine the uproar. Especially for those who use 360's purely as extenders. I 'doubt' this will happen too. Perhaps they may cease development for it, but will leave it as a working addition to the dash.

[StumpyBloke]

Yeah I agree...they may well stop developing but won't remove it!

[cw-kid]

If they did remove it Microsoft would get so much of a bashing on the Internet forums and blogs, if you thought they got a mass of negativity when they announced DE was being removed from Vail, can you imagine the backlash about removing MCX from the XBOX? I for one would be there holding up my placard and protesting as would allot of other people I should think. If they did do this it would kill off Media Center for sure.

[StumpyBloke]

Yeah I really don't think we need to worry about it. But as Stuart says, if MS in their "infinite wisdom" did decide to cull MCE then it would most certainly be the beginning if the end of MC!

[Dunks517]

It's been discussed between myself databasejase and rgreenpc. Jase said he could not see the media center tile anywhere on any of the updated dashboard images. I do hope it is kept in! MS will be taking the piss if it it was removed in favour of the iptv stuff.

[STC]

Have they called it a different name, but it still extends from an MC PC?

[STC]

OMG, they haven't called it 'Connected Home' or 'Windows Entertainment' have they?
What's with this PR disaster that is morphing everything they've built up into oblivion?
Just look at that dash! Yuck!
Excuse me while I go to the washroom to throw up....

[STC]

Okay, it 'could' be;

LiveTV / My DVR

Although to me this implies the 360's with HDD's being a local DVR for IPTV...

[richard1980]

I guess everybody got bored speculating about Windows 8, so now we've moved on to the Xbox?

If Microsoft decides to pull the extender functionality for the Xbox, perhaps they are going to replace it with extender functionality on the PC...I mean, come on, as long as we're speculating, the option should remain on the table....

[NizZ8]

Media center is not being removed from the xbox with the next update.

Now what they are doing with win8 should be more concerning .

[Dunks517]

I had a look at a few previews on the t'internet and couldn't see Media Center. Speculation it may be but I'm just a concerned end user hoping that my multiroom setup doesn't go for a ball of chalk come October. It would be nice to get a little assurance from MS. Other people have flagged it up on Major Nelson's site with no reply. Good effort on Mr Hyrb's part...

[NizZ8]

You and me to brotha! I'm sure there will be "legacy" support for media center in 8 but haven't heard any new/exciting developments.

[richard1980]

I didn't see WMC in the preview video either, but at the same time I didn't see Calculator, Notepad/Wordpad, Solitaire, or any of dozens of other familiar Windows features. I guess we should all be worried Microsoft will drop those things too. Or we could just admit that the preview video was simply a preview, not meant to be an in-depth video showcasing all the features of Windows 8.

As for Xbox, I don't know where you got the idea Microsoft will be dropping extender support. My guess is it's more baseless speculation.

[Dunks517]

I do hope it's still there, but MS haven't really sold media center to the masses over the past couple years and with it not being seen on the preview or hands on videos it has given a few people concerns especially myself with multiple Xboxes around the house. As for calculator and notepad etc I wasn't talking about Windows 8 features, I was taking about MCX which hopefully and I'm sure you'll agree is hidden somewere on the dash and will still able to boot straight into come mid October.

Duncs

[cw-kid]

Its obvious now and has been for a very long time that the XBOX is the new Media Center. I wonder how the live TV will work on XBOX ? I doubt you'll be able to integrate with Freeview OTA or FreeSAT, more likely premium paid services from Sky. That's what I don't like about the XBOX, the content is expensive, call me cheap and I am a Yorkshire man but I don't wanna be paying the Zune marketplace prices, they even charge you to watch stupid music videos, surely that type of content should be free ?

The current Video Library on the XBOX to connect to your own local media not stored on the XBOX itself, via DLNA - say the media you have stored in Zune or WMP12, the Video Library UI is terrible, it just brings up one long text list of my movie video files and it a nightmare to navigate. If they made the media library for local media more like Media Center I wouldn't be so worried if Media Center does eventually get canned as long as they have wider codec support obviously. Although in my mind you can never beat a PC for the enthusiast to tweak and make a system his own!

Who know's where Media Center is heading in Windows 8 ? I hope they announce something about it soon or people are just gonna be speculating and thinking the worst.

[STC]

As for Xbox, I don't know where you got the idea Microsoft will be dropping extender support. My guess is it's more baseless speculation.

I think the OPs point was all the screen grabs show no reference to MC.
Perhaps along the same lines MS cloned the old TGB into WE, they dropped the reference to MC.
All in all it totally fuels speculation, and understandably so Baseless, yes, because we have nothing to go on but our imagination.

[richard1980]

I do hope it's still there, but MS haven't really sold media center to the masses over the past couple years and with it not being seen on the preview or hands on videos it has given a few people concerns especially myself with multiple Xboxes around the house. As for calculator and notepad etc I wasn't talking about Windows 8 features, I was taking about MCX which hopefully and I'm sure you'll agree is hidden somewere on the dash and will still able to boot straight into come mid October.

Duncs

My mind was thinking one thing, my fingers typing something else. The point I was trying to make is that just because you don't see something in the video doesn't mean it isn't going to be there. I was referencing the Windows 8 preview video, which did not include common features such as Calculator, Notepad, etc. You don't see anybody speculating about whether or not Calculator is going to be in Windows 8. But if Microsoft doesn't include something about WMC in one of their videos, it starts a chain reaction of speculation in this community. People start panicking, thinking WMC is going to be dropped from Windows, or in this case, extender functionality will be dropped from the Xbox. But nobody ever applies the same logic to Calculator, Notepad, or Solitaire. Why didn't Microsoft show us Calculator in the Windows 8 preview video? Does that mean they are going to drop it? No, it doesn't. So why didn't they show it? Because Microsoft isn't going to waste valuable time rambling on about things that aren't going to sell their product. Calculator isn't going to sell Windows 8. The "fancy" new GUI is what is going to sell Windows 8, and that is what they focused on. By the same token, extender functionality isn't going to sell the Xbox. I didn't watch the Xbox video/see the pictures/read the article (whichever applies), but I can guarantee you they focused on things that will drive sales of the Xbox (or so Microsoft thinks). Sadly, no matter how much we wish TV functionality would sell Microsoft's products, it won't. So they aren't going to waste any time on it. That doesn't mean they won't include the functionality. It just means it's not an important enough aspect to really drive sales, and thus not important enough to include in the video/screenshots/whatever.

[glugglug]

I think the odds of Microsoft removing extender functionality from the XBOX are about 10x greater than the odds of Windows 8 really requiring developers to use JavaScript and HTML5. Which means I would definitely bet against it.