Digital Home Thoughts: Microsoft Teams with CableLabs to Get HDTV onto the PC for Holiday 2006

"Microsoft Corp. said on Wednesday it is teaming up with cable companies to make it easy for consumers to watch high-definition cable television programs through their PCs, Xbox 360 video-game consoles and other computer devices. Microsoft, the world's largest software developer, on Wednesday said it is working on plug-and-play technology with CableLabs, an industry research group that sets standards for cable TV, data and phone services. Microsoft and CableLabs will develop PCs that can easily accept digital cable cards -- devices that perform the same functions as set-top boxes, but are small enough to plug into slots built in TVs, computers and other home electronics devices."

Well here's some good news for once! We've been screaming for HDTV on Windows Media Center Edition PCs since they first came out, and this is the first concrete announcement with a release date that I've seen. Holiday 2006 seems like a long time to wait, but I'm not surprised because support for all of the DRM likely also requires Vista, and a few hardware technologies. It's a bit depressing though to know that neither of my less-than-a-year-old TVs will unlikely be able to take advantage of it. The number of people willing to go out and buy new LCD monitors or TVs just to get HDTV on their PC is going to be small. Let's hope I'm wrong and Microsoft hasn't badly miscalculated.