Chris Lanier's Blog

This is aactually a point of concern. Another company out of the Media Center Game.

It is almost like we are seeing a Move towards High End or Custom Installer based MCE systems.

It is a bad sign. The MCE has been to this point really a power user program. Even though sales show alot of MCE sku's sold, that only means it was the OS that was installed. It does not mean that people are actually using it.

If this deos go the way of custom and high end installers then half your user market that actually exists will go away because they can't afford it.

Take a look at The Green Button. The majority of users on there can build a MCE that is as powerful or more powerfull then half the custom ones out there at a lower cost. And those same people have been delt a blow with no ability to build cable card pc's.

I myself have purchased 3 different MCE machines over the years. All from differnet manufactures at an average cost of $1700. All nice machines. But it is the MCE machines I have built, 4 in all for myself not counting the ones for friends, that have run better, faster, and with less issues. All these were built at an average cost of $1200. The smallest of which has 4 tuners, and 500 gigs of recording space.

So in the end I just MS taking an awsome product and screwing over the market that helped actually make it a viable product and handing it over to people who have the money to afford the high prices.

Seriously.... what about those of use who have been on board with the MCE since the day it came out?

This definitely does not look good for pre-built HTPC's for the mass market.  However, it seems that there are not completely out of the HTPC market as I though they just had a new machine with a 200 disc Blu-Ray changer (though that model does not appear to have a cablecard).  Also, does this mean that Niveus will be the only company offering the 200 disc DVD changer for MCE?

This kind of confuses me. If anyone was going to target the CI crowd I would think that it'd have been Sony. With the price tag it carried ($2500 at least with a CC tuner according to Cnet's review0 and style I thought it already was aimed at them.

Oh well, this is a shame. Sony should OEM that case or something cause it's gorgeous.

Thank you very much for raising awareness on this matter.

The XL3 is indeed sold out from our Sony Style web site but in no way whatsoever are we out of the HTPC MCE business-- the XL3 sell through velocity simply exceeded our expectations.

In fact, in the coming months we will come out with a refresh of the HTPC segment… stay tuned.

As such, rest assured, we are definitely here to stay…

J Piazza

Sony