WinHEC 2005: Day 2
by Derek Wilson & Jarred Walton on April 27, 2005 8:45 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Home Entertainment (Cont'd)
Beyond the software side of the equation, hardware was emphasized as being increasingly important for enabling all of the rich media that users would desire. Microsoft suggests that home entertainment devices - particularly those that interact with the TV - need to be more than just functional. An attractive and easy to use interface was emphasized as a major portion of building a competitive product, and creating a device that features such a UI requires increasingly powerful hardware. Providing more powerful hardware at lower price points - which is what is really needed in order to get people to adopt these solutions - requires a modified approach to hardware design.
Current devices can often make use of "System on a Chip" (SoC) hardware. This provides all of the major components - processor, video, input/output, encryption, etc. - in a cost-effective package. In current devices, there are often auxiliary chips that provide additional features. Video and audio outputs are a candidate for a separate chip, and in many current solutions the encryption and video portions are also on separate chips. While not necessarily a bad design decision, the costs are usually higher and increased integration with the "Everything on a Chip" concept was suggested.
With further integration, external busses are reduced and performance of several key areas can be improved. Decoding and encoding of multiple simultaneous streams becomes possible. Why would you need support for that many streams? Imagine a system recording one stream, displaying a second stream, serving a third stream to a separate system over the network, and possibly running picture-in-picture as well. It's an extreme scenario, but Microsoft feels such usage patterns are realistic for the 2006-2007 timeframe, with support for as many as eight or more streams becoming necessary in the future.
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JarredWalton - Saturday, April 30, 2005 - link
I don't know what people do that causes these supposed crashes all the time. It's not that XP *never* crashes, but it's so rare that I almost always look for hardware problems if it begins to occur frequently. (Well, that and checking drivers, spyware, etc.) I have applications crash as well, but you can't really blame MS for an application bug (unless they wrote the application, of course).NightCrawler - Friday, April 29, 2005 - link
Damn my TV crashed, maybe the blue screen could include a picture of Bill Gates.Anyways here are the steps to enjoying Longhorn:
1. Buy super fast hardware from newegg/zipzoomfly etc.
2. Install Windows 2010 {Longhorn}.
3. Install Crack provided by 12 year old chinese/russian super hacker.
4. Enjoy :)
JarredWalton - Thursday, April 28, 2005 - link
Bill Gates mentioned in the keynote that the cost for a tablet PC is now ~$100 more than that of a standard laptop, and they feel that was critical in getting increased adoption of tablet PCs. Certainly, MS gave no indication that they think tablets are going away, although they didn't say a whole lot about them becoming more popular.Windows CE is still a pretty major business for MS, but I think the focus at this WinHEC was on the launch of XP-64 and the work being done on Longhorn. CE 5.0 is used in many products, and I believe it is the renamed version of PocketPC, right? (I don't follow that market as much, so I may be way off.)
Cygni - Thursday, April 28, 2005 - link
These arent the things that really get the most coverage or press, but i was wondering if there was much or anything on display from the Tablet and PocketPC worlds? I know all the market people seem to think that PocketPC's are on the way out, but i still see a gigantic amount of potential not being tapped. Tablets too... they seem to be dropping off the market instead of growing.Any new stuffs about MS's stance at WinHEC or anything would be enjoyed on this end. Thanks.
Son of a N00b - Thursday, April 28, 2005 - link
i for one, while i can see the future do not like HTPC's, expecially when they are not the best quality (plz correct me if i am wrong, becuase i do not know much abot thme), but i like having a TV and a PC, having them run out of the same box at the same time though wouldnt be to bad, along with house controls, like air conditioning, lights, ect...now that would be cool, yet unpractical until twenty years from now....HTPC's INHO cannot really benefit yet...DerekWilson - Thursday, April 28, 2005 - link
Thanks Pete :-)Pete - Thursday, April 28, 2005 - link
I figure with this nitpick, both of you will be as *wary* of my posts as I'm *weary* of how weak Word's spellcheck is in this era of 2+GHz CPUs.Last paragraph, page two. ;)
Good read, and good points WRT DRM.
sprockkets - Thursday, April 28, 2005 - link
funny but using my new cheap $150 lite on dvd recorder I use the svideo in port and record 1080i shows and it looks good enought for me in 720x480. And using one with a built in hdd is much easier than using a computer to do the same thing, not to mention much smaller and cheaper. Yeah you can do more with a computer, but why have a 200w device doing what my lite on does with 36w?IP over TV? I can see it now. "Sorry, cannot connect to show LOST due to too many users."
"My MCE got hacked, and all the friends I had over saw porn come on the screen during the movie."
I think for these people it's a matter of not making money, it's just I want to release my show when I want where I want. On the consumer side, I want the right to have it now, as in I don't want to wait 8 months for you to release a movie onto personal formats.
oupei - Thursday, April 28, 2005 - link
#13 just like you could use win98 right now? I don't think xp will be an alternative for very long. Linux, on the other hand, might be...man, why does it have to be "home theater IN A BOX"? do you have to make a point to exclude real home theater systems?
Brian23 - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link
Don't forget that we can still use XP or Linux if these newfangled operating systems take away our rights.