Tuesday, December 6, 2005
The Xbox 360 as a Stealth DVR
Posted by Jason Dunn in "ARTICLE" @ 07:00 AM
"Given my interest in the Media Center PC as a Long Tail video platform, I was particularly interested in how well it worked as a Media Center "extender", serving as the link between one of the TVs scattered around our house and the Windows Media Center PC running in the study that serves as our media library and DVR. The simple answer is very well indeed. We'd been using the original Xbox as an extender, but it was always a somewhat clunky solution. For starters, the extender software required a disk to be loaded each time, so if there happened to be a game disk in the machine already, switching them was an extra step. The Xbox also had to be turned on and off manually, an artifact of the fact that it's basically just a regular PC in a closed box. The Xbox 360, on the other hand, has the extender software built-in, and the remote control included with the "fully-loaded" package has a dedicated green Media Center button that both turns on the Xbox 360 and takes it directly to the Media Center interface. The remote can also turn the machine off, which is handy."
Some further details and speculation on how the Xbox 360 may be Microsoft's secret weapon in the battle for the living rooms of the world.
Some further details and speculation on how the Xbox 360 may be Microsoft's secret weapon in the battle for the living rooms of the world.
