Chris Lanier's Blog

I'm very interested to find out what exactly is in this new release. According to Chris's other blog entry which he links to, the release will have "Content Protection". That sounds a bit scary?! Is Microsoft going to make Media Center even more restrictive? I remember hearing awhile ago that Microsoft was going to implement a deadline which you can view your content. So if HBO says you have only 2 weeks to watch an episode of Entourage, then even if you were on vacation in those 2 weeks, you won't be able to watch the episode. If this new update is going to have this kind of deadline feature, then it sounds to me that we shouldn't update our Media Centers (if it ain't broke, then don't fix it), and perhaps we should look into using a different DVR software technology which is more open and less in the beds of Hollywood execs.

persumably the new media center keyboard is going to be sold aug 18 at bestbuy. i thought the rumor was rollup2 will have the drivers for the keyboard for support in mce 2005. doesn't this mean the rollup will have to come out by the 18th?

Jaxim: I'll talk about that later.

noneer keyboard: That's update was released already, Update Rollup 2 will not include it. - http://msmvps.com/chrisl/archive/2005/07/09/56851.aspx

From the conversations I have had with Microsoft people they all refer to the update being out this "fall" which points to being September/October.
But thats just me guess.

I suspect it has somthing to do with Harware as well

Here in Denmark, Media Center PCs will go on sale on the September 2. We have not had a Danish version of MCE2005 until now, and one of the things included in Rollup 2 is the support of additional locales.

Thats a hint that we will see the update before too long.

On Saturday, I wrote briefly about a post that Chris Lanier published on his site, which speculated about the ship date of Windows XP Media Center Edition Update Rollup 2. So ... did that code actually ship as scheduled last week? The Neowin article that Chris used as his source...

well, where the heck is it

Yes, and what is actually making this release? It seems HD cablecard is out so there is not much left to be excited about. If we ever get to the point where MCE forces us to watch ads or limit content usage to a crippling point there will be a mass migratoin to Sage / BTV. There are other choices and MS must know this.