Is Windows 8 the death of the Windows HTPC?

[itznfb]

Not sure what happened to my other response but anyway.... whether you believe it or not it's happening. Look how far services like Hulu and Netflix have come within just a couple years. We are starting to see TV shows pop up on those services ONLY. You really think that trend is going to reverse itself? No. HBO already has it's own service and they will merge with one of these companies to stay alive.
There will be a defining show or moment in this shift when everyone realizes that TV is dead. Kind of like when all the Blockbuster stores starting closing and one day you realize "hey remember back in the day when we used to rent movies from a store.... like a year ago."

I'm still surprised how many people are in denial about the direction of broadcast television. Even people that say they are stuck in the 70's somehow find themselves denying it's death.

[makryger]

I agree with you that traditional tv is heading in a downward trend, but I think it's slightly different in an industry that is as highly regulated as cable and phone is. It's not really subject to the same rules of capitalism as (for example) blockbuster is. The government has attempted to make tv backward compatible to alienate as few people as possible.

But I could also see the traditional tv industry surviving from a profit perspective too- tv ads are their main source of income, and the same people who are producing the content are deciding where to display that content. If the companies suddenly decide that hulu is not profitable, then the streaming content will disappear, and we'll be back to traditional tv. Just look at Starz, which I believe was the strongest source of movie titles for Netflix. They decided Netflix wasn't making them money, so they cut ties the first chance they got. Now, netflix is infamous for being the company of a million titles, with nothing good to watch. These examples are in contrast to Blockbuster, who didn't really own the content. Actually, I'd argue that it wasn't streaming video that doomed blockbuster, but the netflix dvd service and redbox kiosks. There was no real paradigm shift in how people wanted to view content, there was just a more convenient and less expensive way of viewing the same discs. There is still a big market for getting those physical dvds as new releases. Blockbuster just didn't adapt quickly enough.

[adam1991]

Now, netflix is infamous for being the company of a million titles, with nothing good to watch.

Well, I will dispute that. There's plenty to watch on Netflix streaming. Plenty.

[StumpyBloke]

Of course it's happening, BUT very very slowly! TV in its present form will be around for years and years!!

[barnabas1969]

Of course it's happening, BUT very very slowly! TV in its present form will be around for years and years!!

I agree completely. Especially here in the US where broadcast and cable TV are very strictly regulated. I don't know much about TV in the UK, but in the US... it is unlikely to change for a long, long time.

If it ever goes away, it will be a long time from now. The "Fat Pipe Dream" still has not come to fruition in the US. Many people in the US do not have access to broadband, and many of those who do... do not have sufficient download speed to handle HD TV streams. Especially people like Richard... on DSL. DSL is very slow compared to cable internet.

[jamawass]

I still don't get it when people write things like "We are nearing the end of cable/broadcast television". That's absolutely ridiculous! TV broadcasters aren't going to simply abandon the multi-million-dollar ATSC transmitters they bought just a few years ago. Cable providers have a huge stake in the media industry... they own a LOT of the content. They also have a huge investment in infrastructure... and they control a lot of your internet service. Do you really think they're going to make it easy for you to stream their content, for free, over the internet?

Cable and broadcast TV are here for AT LEAST the next 10 years. There is no doubt in my mind about that.

+1

There is nothing special about my neighborhood. Typical american neighborhood with 27 houses on my street. We all know each other and this came up at a block party a couple weekends ago. Out of 27 houses only 3 still had cable and mine was one of them. It's a growing trend that is spreading incredibly fast. My parents even got rid of their cable last month. When I asked them why they got rid of cable the answer is unanimously cost. Fewer and fewer people are willing to pay $150/mo for something they can get for free.

Do I think they are going to make it easy to stream their content for free over the internet.... well, it isn't always free but they already have. Pretty much all content available on cable is provided either free on their own website or through a service such as Hulu.

No one can argue broadcast television is dying. It's just a matter of how fast it will die. I'd bet cable television stations as we know them today won't exist 5 years from now.

Soon consumers will have to make a choice between paying for bandwidth or Cable/Satellite. Why do you think Time Warner and the satellite co's have broadband? They'll start charging all the bandwidth shortly and once their dream of a tiered internet comes true it will cost the same or more as cable fees. The time of unlimited broadband will soon come to an end as I've become rudely aware with data throttling on my "unlimited" ATT 3/4g data plan.

[StumpyBloke]

Of course it's happening, BUT very very slowly! TV in its present form will be around for years and years!!

I agree completely. Especially here in the US where broadcast and cable TV are very strictly regulated. I don't know much about TV in the UK, but in the US... it is unlikely to change for a long, long time.

If it ever goes away, it will be a long time from now. The "Fat Pipe Dream" still has not come to fruition in the US. Many people in the US do not have access to broadband, and many of those who do... do not have sufficient download speed to handle HD TV streams. Especially people like Richard... on DSL. DSL is very slow compared to cable internet.

Exactly! BB in the UK has an average of about 7mbps and most packages have some cap/restriction or other. So as I have said before TV as we know it is here to stay for a long time no matter what anyone says. Internet TV will be in addition to, rather than replace, current TV.

[barnabas1969]

One of the reasons that many people in the US do not have access to broadband is due to the huge expanses of sparsely populated areas in this country. Most of Europe is very densely populated, so it is cost-effective to provide broadband service to almost everyone. In the US, there are homes where the nearest neighbor is several miles away. Broadband providers do not want to run miles of cable to serve one house.

Sure, these homes could get satellite internet... but have you ever tried to use satellite internet? The latency is so high that it's practically unusable for streaming anything. This has to do partly with the distance between the satellite transmitter and the receiver. The signal takes some time to travel that distance. Then, the return path is through normal phone lines... adding to the latency.

[gcoupe]

One of the reasons that many people in the US do not have access to broadband is due to the huge expanses of sparsely populated areas in this country. Most of Europe is very densely populated, so it is cost-effective to provide broadband service to almost everyone. In the US, there are homes where the nearest neighbor is several miles away. Broadband providers do not want to run miles of cable to serve one house.

I live In the Netherlands - probably the most densely-populated country in Europe. Yet even here, if you live in the countryside, you're lucky if you can get decent broadband speeds. I get about 3mb/s download max (on the cheapest plan from my ISP who assumes that everyone can at least get 8mb/s). My neighbours think themselves lucky if they manage to hit 1mb/s download.

With these speeds, I'll be relying on broadcast TV and optical media for some time to come...

[cyborg1024]

If you check the MediaBrowser forums you should find a recompiled version that works well on Windows 8(including the configurator). Im testing it now and it works with everything but my old Harmony plugin. Also I found tht if you take the upgrade install option for Windows 8 MediaBrowser will still be accessible from the media center once its installed along with all your old mappings however the configurator is broken. I belive that to get the app running on Win8 is not the real issue here, its getting a new Metro version built that is going to require alot of community and developer support. There are also alternatives to Media Center as well but its still my preferred program and has been rock solid for me. MediaBrowser and TapiRex for CallerID add a tight interface that is easily controlled by an IR remote. The Win8 Metro interface actually works fairly well for IR remotes as well, I just need a remote with a microphone on it to input commands by speech to finish the experience. Right now applications are limited for Metro but really its been out for only a week now so we cant expect alot at this point in the game. I also wouldnt expect MS to add much functionality. Also I found Total Media Theater adds Bluray functionality to media center to complete the experience. You can still modify ehres.dll to change the theme of Media center. My server still runs windows 7 but Im using Win8 on a little E350 that draws less than 20watts and it works quite well with the new interface. At first I disliked 8 very much but its growing on me once you tweak it a bit. I still wouldnt use it for a desktop PC, but as a media center PC for accessing content from a server it works very well.

[nxsfan]

It took me a while to find cyborg1024's referenced Windows 8 compatible MediaBrowser so here it is for others.
Discussion thread: http://community.mediabrowser.tv/permal ... ndows-8-rp
Actual Download: https://github.com/petesmc/videobrowser/downloads (requires seperate sqlite download apparently).

[cyborg1024]

Try this version of Media Browser, worked for me in Win8 Pro 32bit.
https://github.com/petesmc/videobrowser/downloads

I upgraded to the public beta a week ago and have been trying to cobble together a decent HTPC experience. It has proven to be virtually impossible.

First, I have used a Windows-based HTPC for about a decade, even though I am a daily Mac user, because in the past Windows was superior as HTPC in almost every way. MCE was one of MS's best designed products (together with, ironically, Office for the Mac).

But it seems like MCE has been effectively abandoned by MS, as well as by most of the independent developers who supported it.

Media Browser does not install on Windows 8, and the developers seem reluctant to even commit to supporting the new OS version. Without Media Browser, MCE is not nearly as usable for local content.

The development of new plugins for MCE is practically dead, as a perusal of this board shows. Stuff like MOG (the best music streaming service around, IMO) is not even available as a Windows app. (Although ironically, using Aerodrome provides a great experience of streaming audio and video from my iPad to my HTPC (and thus to my AVR and TV), which allows for using MOG, YouTube, etc. in MCE).

Since Media Browser is not available, I've been exploring XBMC, Media Portal and Plex. Unfortunately, none work well for everything, and development seems to have waned compared to a few years ago. Boxee 1.5 seems the only front end which approaches the breadth of WMC, but the UI is less than ideal, plus further development of Boxee for Windows has officially stopped.

Overall, I believe that Windows is dying as a HTPC platform, and MS seems O.K. with it. My AOPEN HTPC is still going sufficiently strong, but when I need to replace it, I don't think I'll get another Windows box.

BTW, whoever came up with the Windows 8 desktop UI, should be serving tables at McDonald's. The new Metro layer looks like a cheap 3rd party launcher stuck on top of Windows 7, with the old navigation scattered around in a haphazard manner. It's both unintuitive and ugly.

[cyborg1024]

Thanks, it took me a bit of hunting to get back to it as well, I didnt realize you beat me to the post. In my case SQLite wasn't necessary as I had completed an upgrade install and already had the prior versions of .Net. I suspect based on some of the other discussions on the Media Browser forms that installing the older Versions of .Net will also do the trick but please correct me if you find out otherwise. In any case I'm able to use the configurator where as previously I couldn't make any functional changes to MediaBrowser after the upgrade install of Win8. So far in testing content refreshing is working correctly as well. Enjoy!

It took me a while to find cyborg1024's referenced Windows 8 compatible MediaBrowser so here it is for others.
Discussion thread: http://community.mediabrowser.tv/permal ... ndows-8-rp
Actual Download: https://github.com/petesmc/videobrowser/downloads (requires seperate sqlite download apparently).