Windows Media Center (or WMC
as I’ll refer to it from here on out) is included in Windows 7 Home
Premium, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions. All other
versions of Windows 7 do not include the WMC components. WMC is an
outgrowth of Microsoft’s interest in evolving the common PC into a
multimedia entertainment center. Due to specific hardware requirements,
which include a TV tuner capture card with built-in MPEG-2 video
encoding and decoding, a high-end graphics card with a minimum of 64MB
of video memory, DVD recording, a fast processor, and other goodies,
WMC is usually purchased as a preloaded component on a new PC.
Note
Complete
books have been written about Windows Media Center Edition (the
predecessor to WMC-equipped versions of Windows Vista), and I expect
new books will be written about WMC as well, although I believe that
within a week’s time of experimentation, a fairly savvy user can
discover the ins and outs of WMC on her own. It certainly helps to have
a bit of a primer, however, with some tips scattered throughout.
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With
the advent of the Windows Anywhere initiative, users without
WMC-compatible hardware can purchase the hardware separately, install
it, then upgrade the OS to an appropriate version of Windows 7 and
enjoy WMC on their PC.
WMC adds the capability to do the following with a large TV-like interface using a remote control:
Display and record TV shows
Listen to cable, broadcast, and Internet FM radio
Rip and play music CDs
Play DVDs
Manage and display your digital photographs
Record DVDs
Of
course, as you know, you can rip music CDs, play DVDs, and display your
digital photographs using Windows Media Player and Windows Photo
Gallery. WMC essentially puts a
new skin on those functions and integrates them with TV viewing and a
few other goodies. Windows 7 Media Center includes easier access to
IPTV content and TV guides, rich touchscreen capabilities, and a
variety of tools for accessing, navigating, and searching through video
content.
As we know, Microsoft (often
standing on the shoulders of innovative giants) has helped push the
industry to new heights, or at least to take a deep breath on the
technology ascent, by codifying standards. Whether through fostering
cooperation among technology companies or by forcing its own agenda, it
doesn’t much matter. Progressive standards for such things as data CD
recording, sound and video cards, high-resolution color displays,
energy conservation, standardized I/O ports, Plug and Play (PnP)
interfaces, as well as greater overall computer performance have often
been championed by Microsoft. Standards, of course, serve Microsoft
because its bread and butter depends on selling OSs that can run
reliably on as many brands and models of PCs as possible.
WMC
is an exciting milestone in the evolution of PC OSs that began in
earnest back when the first spec for a multimedia PC (MPC) was issued
by Microsoft. I remember writing, even somewhat wistfully, about the
MPC in my earlier Windows books (3.11 and 95). At that time, it was a
big deal to include in PCs the now-ubiquitous sound cards and CD-ROM
drives. (I recall purchasing my first outboard SCSI-based CD-ROM drive
from Toshiba for $600 and change.) The next step (learning from the
woefully underpowered MPC spec) was the Entertainment PC 97 spec. The
minimum system requirements for the Entertainment PC 97 are a 150MHz
Pentium chip, a 256KB Level 2 cache, 32MB of memory, 3D audio, and the
Universal Serial Bus. This spec was a subset of the Simply Interactive
PC (SIPC) spec, to be technically accurate.
Of
course, bloatware applications and the increasing speed demands of the
once-gluttonous Windows itself also spurred the demand for quicker PCs.
Unfortunately, this comes at some cost to the environment as well as
our pocketbooks, as we feel obliged to continuously dispose of older
computers and upgrade to newer ones. On the upside of this unceasing
speed and size war (the belief that bigger and faster are always
better) comes the likes of WMC. Were it not for lightning-fast CPUs,
video cards, hard drives, front-side buses, DVD drives, and inexpensive
color displays, PCs couldn’t begin to tackle exotic, highly
data-intensive tasks such as DVD playback and TV recording.
Following on the heels of the popular TiVo digital video recorder (DVR) and competing systems such as ShowStopper (from
Panasonic) and ReplayTV (from ReplayTV), the WMC attraction to many is
driven primarily by its capability to mimic a DVR. Although, as I
mentioned, WMC also gives you MP3, CD, and DVD playback and digital
photo slideshows, we could already do those with Windows Media Player
and the Windows Picture and Fax viewer, respectively. The only
difference in those departments is the delivery medium: WMC lets you
control the show from the comfort of your armchair, using a remote
control. The show itself plays on your TV or, preferably, through your
TV projector in your home theater.
The idea
of a computerized house—especially for entertainment delivery—is so
appealing that home builders are beginning to build WMC machines, along
with in-wall wiring and integrated large plasma screens, into newly
built homes. Some developers are doing this on a large-scale basis, in
hundreds of homes. This helps housing developers differentiate
themselves from the competition.
Speaking
of competition, alternative hardware and software packages have been on
the market for some time that do all that WMC does, but it’s more of a
mix-and-match approach to creating a home-entertainment PC. For TV
viewing and recording, you have to add hardware such as a TV
tuner/video card to your PC, be sure that the sound card and TV tuner
work together, and so on. You can record and play back TV and even do
text searches through recorded captions, looking for hot words in, say,
a newscast. A quick search on the Web reveals a few well-liked
products, including
CyberLink PowerCinema
SageTV Media Center
SnapStream Beyond TV
Some of these programs have numerous features that WMC is missing, such as web-based control and media-server capability.
