Microsoft plans to announce on Monday that its Media Center OS is moving into new countries, even as the software maker works to make the entertainment software more ready for prime time.
Windows Media Center Continues Overseas March
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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MC _Edition_ is a bit of overstatement. MCE is different from a normal WinXP in that it includes an additional media player application with VCR facilities. There are far better ones out there including SageTV and MythTV.
SageTV and MythTV are cheap wannabe MCEs. Their interface, features and scheduling capability are not as good as MCE’s.
lets turn it around:
MCEs is a cheap wannabe MythTV. Their interface, features and scheduling capability are not as good as MythTV.
See, its so easy…
MythTV supports far more formats, is open, free, very stable.
MCEs is closed does not support a lot of formats, is made by Microsoft, is not free and is not stable.
Since the industry has a history of making the worst system standard MCE will be a success but there are always people who make chooses based on common sence and not business.
Brrrrp..
Once you mention Microsoft as a reason for a product being bad, you lose the argument.
Actually MythTV is very capable. It supports most configuration with either analogue bt878 capture cards, digital DVB-T/S/C cards, analogue mpeg2 encoding cards (WinTV PVR 250/350), with any kind of output you require (X11, DirectFB, even Ascii Art).
You can set it up in a client server fashion as well, soon with clients running on windows. You can use any remote configuration you desire, you can get output to your computers 4×20 char LCD panel. The list goes on. MythTv is a bit difficult to configure the first time, but it’s a state of the art PVR and multimedia server.
And you can reuse the captured files on any machine, not just on the same machine with the same configuration as the locked, proprietary files that MCE creates.
You cannot even get MCE without buying a brand new computer, and, as the article states, “[…] people expect the sound and picture on a $1,500 media-oriented PC to be at least as good as those from a $99 DVD player. In many cases, though, that hasn’t been the case with the first crop of Media Center PCs […]”.
I think that speaks for itself…
While it may not be bad technically, it may still be bad when it comes to ethics and politics depending on your opinions.
That’s the same reason why I don’t buy products from Nestlé, Kraft Foods, Unilever etc. While some of them taste great I question the ethics the companies behind them stands for. That’s why Microsoft products can be bad even though they are good from a technical point of view.
Agreed, Rain. There’s nothing wrong with potential customers making decisions based on their ethical values. There are many companies whose products I won’t buy for ethical reasons. Microsoft happens to be one of them, so it *is* a factor when comparing software products.
>>>While it may not be bad technically, it may still be bad when it comes to ethics and politics depending on your opinions.
<<<Agreed, Rain. There’s nothing wrong with potential customers making decisions based on their ethical values. There are many companies whose products I won’t buy for ethical reasons. Microsoft happens to be one of them, so it *is* a factor when comparing software products.
Rain, your world is too simplistic. If you really believe what you said above, then you shouldn’t support BeOS either — because a major Be Inc. shareholder, Intel, was raided by the Japanese government for screwing OEM manufacturers (so that these OEM’s don’t use AMD chips), the SAME charge that Be Inc. launched against Microsoft.
You can’t support the current BeOS owner, Palm, as well — because they lied about how many colours their PDA’s can display. You can’t support yellowtab because they probably mislead people into thinking that they have the BeOS source code.
Many other anti-MSFT companies are under anti-trust investigations as well (ie. Oracle).
Come to think of it — if you really want to help the world — then you should support Bill Gates. At least, when Bill Gates dies, he will donate 99% of his wealth to charity.
Sam, might I respectfully say that I think your interpretation of Rain’s comments is too simplistic, and misses the point.
Rain hasn’t said *why* he feels ethically compelled not to buy Microsoft. I don’t think it’s anyone’s business to jump on him without knowing his reasons, and point out all the other companies he “ought” to boycott.
We all have to choose the morals we live by, and the practices we will support with our money. He clearly thinks that Microsoft and Nestlé have done worse things than lying about colour resolution. Misleading people in your marketing is one thing; hurting real people is another.
If I was to list my own moral values that lead me to boycott Microsoft, it would take a full sheet of paper, so I won’t do it here. Please just accept that some of us have our reasons, and it’s a personal decision.
>>>Misleading people in your marketing is one thing; hurting real people is another.
>>>If I was to list my own moral values that lead me to boycott Microsoft, it would take a full sheet of paper, so I won’t do it here. Please just accept that some of us have our reasons, and it’s a personal decision.
Remember the movie “The Usual Suspects” — “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
Up until 3-4 years ago, Microsoft never spent any money on lobbying various governments. You think Microsoft is the worst devil in the world and that other company’s crimes are “minor” — that’s because these other companies have good lobbying and PR departments.
Remember the whole boycott McDonald’s campaign because they used styrofoam boxes in the early 90’s. Bad PR forced McDonald’s to switch to paperbox instead. However it turns out that the new paperbox is worse off environmentally than the styrofoam boxes because they use more energy to manufacture.
http://www.kstatecollegian.com/issues/v099b/sp/n098/opn-plastic-mas…
Don’t buy Microsoft Office, buy WordPerfect (and then turns out that Corel’s Michael Cowpland was a bigger crook).
Don’t use Internet Explorer, use Netscape — and then turns out that AOL is going to get charged by the SEC for creative accounting of $400 millions in “revenue”.
Whatever “good guys” you are backing right now against Microsoft — chances are that these “good guys” are equally bad (but you can’t see it because they got better lobbies).
Sam, I don’t know if you’re trolling or on a crusade to change people’s minds here about Microsoft and McDonald’s. All I know is I don’t have to justify my decisions to you, I have to justify them to myself and to the people they may hurt. I’m responsible for the decisions I make, and the practices I choose to support through my purchases.
“Creative accounting” doesn’t bother me too much. Not all crimes are equal. But if AOL’s accounting practices bother you, don’t support them. You don’t have to explain why.
>>>”Creative accounting” doesn’t bother me too much. Not all crimes are equal. But if AOL’s accounting practices bother you, don’t support them. You don’t have to explain why.
Creative accounting wiped out many people’s retirement savings. AOL alone wiped out over 100 BILLIONS dollars in equity, left many people jobless.
>>>All I know is I don’t have to justify my decisions to you, I have to justify them to myself and to the people they may hurt. I’m responsible for the decisions I make, and the practices I choose to support through my purchases.
Good — but you have to justify to yourself OBJECTIVELY. All I ask is that you look a little deeper before you make a decision.