What in the world is wrong with this guy?

@Minh:  Move along. Nothing to see here.

Thats how my TV are going to look like if the kill MCE

I  bet there will be tons of apps to access online channels. And then, when you finally have so many apps, they will start to open a special store for those apps with standard communication protocol. 

10 hours ago, magicalclick wrote

No DVD playback in Win8 anymore? 

Welcome to the '00s... 

2 hours ago, fabian wrote

@Minh:  Move along. Nothing to see here.

Thats how my TV are going to look like if the kill MCE

3 hours ago, Harlequin wrote

Weird...my BlueRay drive is pretty much useless now in Windows 7 because it can't play back BlueRay movies, I gues Windows 8 would make it one step closer to being a useless drive

Not if you install VLC Media player

4 hours ago, Harlequin wrote

Weird...my BlueRay drive is pretty much useless now in Windows 7 because it can't play back BlueRay movies, I gues Windows 8 would make it one step closer to being a useless drive

The Blu-ray player on my notebook dies all the time. I can usually revive it my manually moving the laser assembly back and forth. I haven't yet escalated it to drop-kicking the entire notebook, but I've come close.

Just to clarify my position, I find most people to be a-holes, including myself on occasion. When the editions of Windows 8 were announced, there was some confusion-- or perhaps shock and denial-- about what was plainly in front of us; if you wanted Media Center, you would need Windows Pro.

The two feature sets are completely orthogonal, from a dependency standpoint. Pro is about business, while Media Center is about entertainment, plain and simple. The screwing was so strait-forward, that it really pissed a lot of dedicated Microsoft supporters. Theses people have stuck with the Microsoft brand, where other people have selected competing solutions.

To not address these concerns or even justify them with shoddy statistics, and continue on as usual, is borderline obscene.

-Josh

I want my Ultimate Extras

@brian.shapiro: Tinker and Hold 'Em?

@JoshRoss:

WMC is dead anyway, at least you can get it back somehow. Unlike Up button in Win7 and Win8 Start Menu + Metro IE Favorite, they are all offically gone.

In the recent new, Bing 411 is offically dead now, and today is the day I learn this service for the first time. No matter how much I use LiveSide to dig up all the MS hidden offerings, I am still lost at the treasure hunt.

16 hours ago, DeathByVisualStudio wrote

*snip*

So we're supposed to trust OEMs who load our brand new PCs with crapware to pay licenses for the codecs, etc. required to include playback support? Sorry, just because Sinofsky says it doesn't make it true.

You realise that, prior to Windows 7, that was pretty much the situation anyway. Plenty of people watched DVDs on XP and Vista without ever being aware that the OS itself didn't ship with playback codecs in most cases. TBH most OEMs seem to like to bundle media playback stuff anyway (most of which is genuinely awful), so you've probably actually paid for codec inclusion twice when you buy a PC anyway.

5 hours ago, JoshRoss wrote

The two feature sets are completely orthogonal, from a dependency standpoint. Pro is about business, while Media Center is about entertainment, plain and simple. The screwing was so strait-forward, that it really pissed a lot of dedicated Microsoft supporters. Theses people have stuck with the Microsoft brand, where other people have selected competing solutions.

To not address these concerns or even justify them with shoddy statistics, and continue on as usual, is borderline obscene.

Enterprise is for business. Pro is for people who want the version of Windows that has everything or those who can't possibly bare to think they may be missing out on something. The default Windows 8 is for people who just buy a PC and want it to work.

Whichever version you get, there is an upgrade path that gets you to Media Center. Assuming you really still want it, because in reality Metro is essentially the replacement, there's really no reason to assume that all the functionality you might have been using won't already be replaced by Metro Device apps for whatever TV decoder hardware you have and/or other Metro apps.

I still don't understand the point of WMC on most devices, other than on an HTPC. It works great on my desktop as I can immediately pull up TV on it or listen to my library when I'm doing something else away from my computer. I don't use it at all on my laptop...I'll just open up VLC as I don't want to open up a full fledged media application if I'm going to be doing other work at the same time. I think WMC is just more suited for a remote control environment...when you're not actually sitting at your machine to do stuff.

The only time I've ever really used in anger it is round a friends house for watching downloaded TV shows and stuff. She'd just plug her laptop into the TV (she had no use for a dedicated HTPC) and then use MC because the laptop happened to come with a little remote control for it. And that's not really a scenario in which MC itself is key, rather it's the convenience of being able control it from the sofa without a full keyboard or anything.

I think Microsoft accepted a bribe from the makers of WinDVD.

13 hours ago, AndyC wrote

*snip*

You realise that, prior to Windows 7, that was pretty much the situation anyway. Plenty of people watched DVDs on XP and Vista without ever being aware that the OS itself didn't ship with playback codecs in most cases.

Vista Home Premium and above did ship with a built in DVD decoder iirc.

And I can't see how this is a good move. At all. 

3 hours ago, cbae wrote

I think Microsoft accepted a bribe from the makers of WinDVD.

That would explain a lot...  

Not sure it will help much though... people will just turn to the... "alternatives"... 

10 hours ago, GoddersUK wrote

*snip*

Vista Home Premium and above did ship with a built in DVD decoder iirc.

Home Premium and Ultimate did, all the other versions didn't.

Which probably covers about 90% of Vista users who wanted to play DVDs.