Yeah, duh. Anything Apple does, Microsoft will be there to compete, either directly or indirectly. Now according to SeekingAlpha, the latest item in Microsoft’s cross-hairs is AppleTV. For years, MS has been using its Windows Media Center extender technology to allow devices like the Xbox 360 and your home computer to be turned into Windows Media Center platforms. Though it’s actually a decent UI and works very well, it just never took off for Microsoft correctly.
Now Yahoo! News is reporting the following:
Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is going in a hyper-announcement mode: it is announcing its plans to help launch a new line of “media extenders”, which are TV set-top boxes which will connect wirelessly to PCs running the Home Premium or Ultimate flavors of Windows Vista and enable users to use their TV sets to watch movies, online video and other content stores on PCs. Essentially something like Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iTV.
[...]
MSFT launched a different line of extenders a few years ago for the Windows XP Media Center Edition, but it never took off.
With AppleTV losing appeal and possibly even being phased out, Apple has got to get back into the game of streaming media if it wants to compete with Microsoft. With so many Xbox 360 owners out there, all Microsoft needs to do is make the software easy-to-use and accessible. Then it’s all over.
Microsoft to Compete With AppleTV [Seeking Alpha]
Comments
I’ve been using this way before AppleTV was even started…
This is inaccurate. Windows Media Center and the Extender was out before AppleTV was around. It is a far outshines AppleTV, IMO.
Yea I wouldn’t necessarily consider this a “Microsoft does what Apple does” situation. Theres no secret that for years Microsoft is trying to take over the living room. thats why theres an Xbox, thats why there is a media center edition OS. They had the a media center extender back on the original XBox.
there has been rumors and announcements about adding Tivo-like functionality to the 360 since the launch. and to be honest, is Appletv doing that well that any media device is compared to it? I hardly think so.
how about “Microsoft to compete with Netgear”
“….Yeah, duh. Anything Apple does, Microsoft will be there to compete….”
How totally disconnected from reality are you?? There were tons of ways to do this stuff before Apple got a clue. And Microsoft was one of those ways.
I have been running my own Meida Center setup for at least 4 years, thank you.
I am constantly amazed by the degree of blindness of the Apple fanboys, you should really climb out of that hole and look around. Really, if you are going to write for a Tech site, try to know whats really going on instead of promoting your own limited myopic vision.
do some freaking research!
the media center has been around for a while now, I used my old xbox (1) as an extender for xp media center and switched to the vista mce (living room) + xbox 360 (bedroom, cables through a wall because the damn thing makes too much noise) as soon as it hit the streets. Apple has not even begun to catch up imho. The only “good” thing apple does is the videopodcasts in itunes and thats it.. !!! (cant get the video downloads from apple or microsoft in the netherlands.. )
writing this on a macbook, also have a video ipod.
I would have loved to use MCE, but Microsuck said I had to buy it pre-installed. No upgrade from XP available. Argh!
Hm…this looks a lot like U-verse, the IPTV offering from AT&T. MS is running all the software for the set top boxes/DVR’s for all the installations–which climbed to over 100,000 customers last month.
Love ‘em or hate ‘em (and I’m not fan by any means) Microsoft has made inroads to the living room far better than Apple has.
Umm….. Microsoft has been doing this YEARS before Apple even thought about it.
Leave Comment
Commenting Options
Create an avatar that will appear whenever you leave a comment on a Gravatar-enabled blog.