Why have a noisy PC for running MCE to your TV? An Extender, such as this Linksys unit, can all but clone the MCE 2005 UI and stream high bit-rate content from your MCE PC over 802.11b/g or wired Ethernet.

MCE 2005's DVD player app is basic, and the OS doesn't include an MPEG-2 decoder. We used NVIDIA's new DVD decoder with the 6800 GT, and the results were as solid as a good home player. Whichever codec you select, you'll want to pick up a compatible third-party player such as CyberLink's MCE-certified Power-DVD. The feature benefits over MCE's integrated player are substantial.

The biggest advance in MCE 2005 is support for dual TV tuners. This finally lets MCE record one show while you watch another. That's cool. What is not so cool is that MCE 2005 doesn't support HDTV stations from your HD cable or satellite box. You can view the stations in standard def, but you can't record them. In fact, the only way to get HDTV in an MCE 2005 system is to purchase an OTA (over-the-air) HDTV receiver card such as ATI's HDTV Wonder.

This brings up another major concern: form factor. One contributor to MCE 2004's lackluster sales was that most incarnations appeared in bulky tower systems. MCE is generally viewed as a living room product, and most people don't want fat towers next to their TVs. A Shuttle box is about as tall as you want, and thin pizza box designs blend in the best. (Niveus Media has some stunning examples.) But with a graphics adapter, TV tuner, OTA HD tuner, and perhaps an Audigy 2 for improved sound, that's three or four cards. Most SFF boxes have two slots. For a fully configured MCE machine, especially one with two to four hard drives for plenty of (RAID-protected) storage, you're almost required to use an ATX-compatible case.

Into The UI

The home page for MCE's 10-foot UI features nine areas: Play DVD, Online Spotlight, My Videos, My Pictures, My TV, My Music, Radio, More Programs, and Settings. To the right are two or three icon "tiles," or shortcuts to commonly or recently used items. Once you're in an MCE area, subcategories run down the left while data or options dominate the right. A thumbnail of the media that's playing occupies the bottom-left corner. Overall, this is a simple, effective UI design, which is probably why most media center apps have adopted it.

We don't have space to fully outline MCE 2005's many features and options, but here are a few key observations.

My TV. MCE 2005's on-screen EPG (electronic programming guide) is as easy as they get. We had no problem retrieving additional program data, scheduling individual or series recordings, or searching for shows based on various criteria. We like that there's a "Movies" link on the main My TV screen to help filter for movie content. If you're more prone to record game shows than movies, however, there's no way to change the filter for that button, much less add similar buttons to the My TV screen or edit the Movies link. Overall, MCE 2005's UI has very little customizability.

If there's a conflict or problem, Microsoft's recording scheduler does a good job of automatically changing your scheduled session to a later showing. Prior to knowing that MCE 2005 wouldn't record cable-based HD stations, we were perplexed that MCE let us schedule recordings of HD shows but the content didn't show up in the recent recordings list. In fact, we never knew there had been an error until we stumbled across the History link in the Scheduled area. MCE needs to improve communicating such errors or simply add set-top-based HD support. According
to Microsoft, MCE 2005 Update 1 will include native HDTV support.

Because MCE is constantly caching a bit of live TV, on-the-fly recordings started instantly. Quality looked excellent at the Best setting, and the options for when to delete recordings (after one month, when space gets low, etc.) are easy to use.

We tested MCE 2005 with a Comcast set-top box and ATI's HDTV Wonder. The OS set up both tuners and integrated them seamlessly with the EPG, letting us record two shows simultaneously. MCE 2005 can actually record three shows at once: two in standard def and one in HD. You can also change MCE 2005's UI from 4:3 to 16:9 in the Settings area with the remote.

We were also put off at first by the ability for a 10-foot, translucent version of Windows Messenger to pop up during TV viewing. (Another 2005 improvement is that overlays are now translucent.) Do you really want that interruption while embroiled in a show? Then again, would you rather have a phone interruption? We found the Do Not Disturb function and were happy again.

My Music and My Videos. My Videos, like Play DVD, is basically a stripped-down file browser and executer. It's cool that you can launch your videos and watch them in the lower-left thumbnail window while doing other things, but there's little else here to captivate users. My Music has more meat. Our favorite feature is Queue, an ad-hoc list of to-be-played files. Most media doesn't have this; when you select a new song, the one currently playing stops. MCE 2005 lets you surf your collection and build an impromptu playlist without interrupting the music. You can edit the order of items in the Queue, save it as a playlist, or burn it to CD/DVD.

Disc-burning support is new in 2005, and you will also find the link in My Pictures. You'd expect it in My Videos and My TV and Recordings, but the lack of an integrated MPEG decoder must have dissuaded designers. If you enter the Create CD/DVD area, however, you'll find media selection options for recorded TV, music, pictures, and videos. Note that Windows Movie Maker 2.1 only supports DVD burning in MCE 2005.

One strong improvement in MCE 2005 is better attention to metadata. When you press the remote's "i" (More) button or right-click an object, MCE displays additional data about the media. We discovered this in My Music (you can edit track metadata in 2005 with the remote) and used it heavily in My TV and other modules. Expect future third-party plug-ins for different MCE content types.

My Pictures. Viewing digital photos is more of a family thing than something power users get jazzed about, but 2005's ability to let you use the remote to start and control a slideshow is pretty sweet. This author's 3-year-old son actually gave up watching cartoons in trade for slideshows of recent zoo or beach visits, which ran with background tunes selected from the My Music Queue, by the way. You can burn a disc full of pictures, print them, and even do rudimentary photo editing, all with the remote. You can also insert a flash card and import and save photos to the hard drive without switching out to WinXP.

Online Spotlight. Forget MCE 2005's Radio, even though it supports time-shifting. That terrestrial broadcast stuff is toast. After playing with MSN Music and Napster through MCE 2005, we're 100% sold on music subscription services, particularly if they integrate with the 10-foot UI. (Napster also integrates into SnapStream's Beyond Media quite nicely.) There are more services available in Windows Media Player 10, but you lose the remote control convenience.

For $10 per month, you have thousands of albums at your fingertips. Because we subscribed to Napster to fill in the gaps of our ripped music collection, we haven't played a physical CD even once. (That may change if/when DVD-Audio or another high bit-rate 5.1 disc format becomes popular.) We are less sold on MCE's present movie partners, but that's more Hollywood's fault than anyone's. Movies will catch up to music eventually.

One other notable point: There are hooks from the Online Spotlight area over to Radio. When we selected a 1980s music station in Live365 and pressed the Add to My Radio link, a shortcut appeared in Radio. Not terribly intuitive, but still nice.

MCEverywhere

If the MCE form-factor dilemma has you down, consider an Extender. Media Center Extenders are slim set-top boxes that connect via wired Ethernet or 802.11a/g to your MCE 2005 PC. An Extender is like running Windows Remote Desktop without a hard drive, mirroring your MCE 10-foot Desktop onto the TV you plug into. We used Linksys' WMCE54AG Extender ($299.99) and were very impressed despite the inflated, first-gen cost. (After all, it's basically a case and integrated motherboard.) You simply power up the device, join it to your network, and use the bundled remote to navigate a carbon copy of the MCE 2005 interface. There's no worry about illegally copying content because all you're doing is playing the file on your MCE system. No copying is involved.

Although we wish Linksys had built in a DVI connector, you do get component, composite, and S-Video out, plus RCA stereo and SPDIF optical out. We connected the unit to a 32-inch Toshiba TV via S-Video and RCA audio and noticed only a slight degradation in video quality to the MCE start page. Not wanting to prejudice our opinion of video performance with any problems that surrounding wireless activity could cause, we planted the device on our wired network. This initially caused an IP address conflict, which we quickly sorted out using Linksys' setup screen to manually assign an address.

The Extender works as promised, from scheduling TV recordings to running photo slideshows. Playback quality was good for live and recorded content, and there was no problem with audio and video synching. Some of the PC's UI elements don't translate over to the Extender, such as the Play DVD area, because the Extender doesn't feature a DVD drive. (Conversely, what's wrong with playing a disc left in the MCE PC? There is no reason not to offer this.) In the end, though, the Extender did everything we wanted, and it presents a persuasive argument for those who believe in planting media servers in the basement or closet. Firmware upgradeable, Extenders are the logical answer for anyone needing media-center functionality in their home theater without the need for gameplay or standard PC apps.

Also, prepare for Xsled in 2005. This software will turn an Xbox into an MCE Extender. If you can run Extender software on a Pentium III with outdated GeForce graphics, why not release Extender as a software upgrade for secondary home PCs? Brilliant question. Stay tuned for Softsled, which is on Microsoft's roadmap for later this year.

Microsoft has also completed its "media anywhere" push with the PMC (Portable Media Center) platform. (See our coverage on page 64.) With the ability to carry your MCE interface from the Desktop to any display in the home to your pocket, Microsoft at last has an end-to-end vehicle for ubiquitous multimedia access that's simple enough for anyone to use. Is it annoying that a $500 portable player is chained to a more-or-less proprietary Desktop platform? Yes. Will you care when you see how easy and convenient handling media is when these pieces come together? We doubt it.

Ready For Primetime?

Nobody else even comes close to what Microsoft has accomplished with this MCE generation. Had Microsoft merely tied MCE to the Desktop as it did with 2004, this version would surely meet its predecessor's fate. But MCE 2005 begs to thrive beyond the Desktop, and Microsoft has made it easy enough for even grannies to grasp.

Bashing Microsoft is fashionable, and it has earned its share of kicks over the years. Not this time, though. MCE 2005 delivers a sterling AV experience and nails the 10-foot UI dead on. MCE is more than an individual software app; it's a "solution" for the whole family. We shy away from using that cliché, but you won't understand how applicable it is until you put MCE 2005 to work. Use MCE and its peripheral devices for a month and then take it all away. You'll see the problem for which MCE is the solution. MCE 2005 isn't software; it's a lifestyle change.

And perhaps Microsoft is taking a tip from its Xbox playbook. MCE 2005 systems are shaping up to be far more affordable than their 2004 forebears. Many promise to dip under $1,000. However, the Extenders and PMCs cost almost as much as a PC. And down the road, would you rather spend $300 on an Extender set-top or an Xbox with Extender software. The MCE 2005 OEM version cost less at Newegg.com than the WinXP Pro OEM version, and base hardware requirements are likely to drop as components improve and drivers pass MCE testing. Microsoft wants to hook you on the UI. The real money can come later.

Does it cost a fortune today for an end-to-end MCE 2005 implementation? Does the OS have the requisite number of first-gen bugs? Are there pieces that Microsoft still doesn't have in place (Web-based EPG, WMV transcoder, etc.)? All yes. But finally, it's the MCE experience that makes us believers.

by William Van Winkle

Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
$140 (plus hardware)
Microsoft
www.microsoft.com