Microsoft Announces New Home Extender
September 28, 2007 | by Christopher Nickson
Microsoft is introducing its Extenders for Windows Media Center, aimed at properly combining your PC and home entertainment center. But are people really interested?
The PC and home entertainment center have been growing inexorably closer over the last several years – we play music, watch videos, TV programs and DVDs on our computers. But Microsoft wants more, which is why they’ve come up with several devices to connect your PC to your home entertainment center.
Known as Extenders for Windows Media Center, these are different from the similarly-named Windows Media Extenders, debuted in late 2004. Those put a version of the Media Center interface on your television, using your home network. It didn’t catch on, but it did spark more research, and more successful work with the Xbox360.
This new version, for Vista Premium and Ultimate (sorry, all you XP fans), uses third-party Wi-Fi hardware devices to connect your broadband-connected PC to your TV, meaning you can send video, HDTV, music and more to your television, and do things such as pause the stream in one room, then start again in another.
So will this one catch on? Initially, it seems so. Linksys, D-Link and Niveus are all offering units to make this work, and the HP MediaSmart LCD HDTV will support this through an optional software download that Microsoft expects to roll out early in the new year. All other devices, which include DVD players will be out just in time for your Christmas shopping pleasure.
At present, less than 10% of US households have extender devices connecting the PC and TV. Whether this can stir excitement remains to be seen, but Microsoft is obviously hopeful.
“We are excited to reveal the first series of totally quiet, cool and sleek-looking Media Center Extender devices designed to deliver the ultimate entertainment experience to every TV set in your home," Joe Belfiore, Microsoft's corporate vice president of the company's entertainment and devices eHome division, told TechNewsWorld.
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Tom on Oct 10th, 2007 at 4:06 PM:
I still do not understand the need for these devices. I do have an XBOX 360 hooked up on my network and a PS3 as well and from time to time we do listen to music or view pictures on the TV but if I want the full functionality of a pc on my tv I would just get a pc and hook it up to the pc input on the back of my tv. I could probably get a pc for around what some of these devices cost and more than likely would be able to do more with it, even now with my xbox, ps3 and wii hooked up to my network I still cannot watch videos from sites like launch.com because the browsers on these systems won't support them. So if these new devices are anything like the current fare I think I'll stick to the good'ol pc since I a;ready have a network up and running why not use something I know will work.