New stand-alone Media Center Extenders and Windows Home Server software cater to users who are interested in transferring digital media and other data between PCs on a home network. However, Microsoft's own interest in such connected home scenarios has waned—for example, the 2007 marketing campaign for Windows Vista makes almost no mention of digital media and the connected home—suggesting that these will be positioned as niche products.

Media Center Extenders, Take Two

Several partners are shipping new stand-alone Media Center Extenders.

First introduced in 2004, Extenders work in conjunction with a Media Center PC and a home network to let users view digital media on a TV set rather than on a computer monitor. Users connect the Extender to a TV set and to a home network that also contains a Media Center PC. A remote control for the Extender lets them control certain functions of the Media Center PC—such as recording and playing back TV shows, watching DVDs or video files, and listening to CDs or music files—while sitting in front of the TV.

Initially, Hewlett-Packard, D-Link, and Roku created stand-alone Extenders to work with Windows XP Media Center Edition. However, these products, which retailed for around US$300, faced competition from Microsoft's own Xbox division: the company shipped a US$80 software add-on for the Xbox that allowed it to function as an Extender and built Extender functionality into the Xbox 360, which shipped in Nov. 2005 for US$399. (A version without a hard drive, which retailed for US$299, cannot serve as an Extender.) Facing this competition, the stand-alone Extenders sold poorly.

In Sept. 2007, several partners announced they would take a second stab at this market by releasing a new set of Media Center Extenders with more functions. For example, Linksys will ship a US$350 Extender with a built-in DVD player, and both Linksys and D-Link will offer several models that support the 802.11n wireless standard, which promises enough bandwidth to stream high-definition video and twice the range as the older 802.11g standard. Hewlett-Packard will also allow users to add Extender capabilities to their MediaSmart LCD high-definition TVs in early 2008 through a software update.

Even so, these products will continue to face competition from the Xbox 360—the least-expensive version with a hard drive now retails for US$350. Moreover, Microsoft is promoting the Xbox 360 as a digital media device in its own right—users can add an HD DVD player to the console, download high-definition movies and TV shows from the Xbox Live service, and will eventually be able to use it as a receiver for TV systems based on Microsoft's IPTV technology (which is being rolled out by AT&T in the United States and several telephone providers in Europe).

Microsoft also announced the beta of Internet TV, a new service that will allow Media Center PC users to download TV content from the Internet rather than having to receive that content via a TV tuner card or cable interface, which many Media Center PCs lack. The first content will be available from MSN Video and will include TV programs such as "Arrested Development" and news from MSNBC.

Home Server Software Available

In Oct. 2007, Microsoft made Windows Home Server available through the system builder channel in the United States, several weeks before hardware partners (including Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, LaCie, and Medion) are due to start shipping the product preinstalled on new devices.

Home Server provides automatic backup of data on multiple PCs on a home network, as well as a central source for storing and sharing digital media and other files. Originally, Microsoft planned to release the product bundled with OEM hardware only, but requests from hobbyists and small PC builders apparently convinced the company to release it through the system builder channel first. The software is available for approximately US$190. The OEM hardware-based Home Servers are expected to ship in November and are expected to retail for US$400 or more.

Shortly before the release, however, a software update for the Community Technical Preview (CTP) version of Windows Home Server illustrated a conceptual problem with the product. Although Microsoft has taken pains to make Home Server easy to administer, servers are inherently complex—for example, one of the updates added information to help files about troubleshooting Windows Home Server with various Internet firewalls—and users will presumably be expected to apply regular updates (which might be separate from updates to their PCs). For backing up critical data, users can increasingly turn to a wide variety of online services—including Microsoft's own Live Drive and Office Live Workspace—that cost nothing and are much simpler to use.

Resources

The Media Center Extender home page is www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/mediacenterextender/default.mspx.

Windows Home Server information is available at www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/default.mspx.