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Short Bits: Softsled, Windows 7, Native HD DVD/Blu-ray - Chris Lanier's Blog

Short Bits: Softsled, Windows 7, Native HD DVD/Blu-ray

Mike at Missing Remote wrote a great article on why Softsled, as a software Extender will never happen.  Foucsing on Mike’s last point in the article, the reason Softsled will never exist is because it doesn’t need to.  Instead, since every copy of Vista Home Premium and Ulitmate includes Media Center the real future is in media/resource sharing as I’ve talked about before.  So, a separate Software Extender will never be released.  However, Microsoft needs to focus on making Media Center work together on different machines.  Automatic media discovery for music, photos, and recorded TV, sharing of a central EPG, and even streaming of live content.

Everyone has been talking about Windows 7 coming in the second half of 2009. Call me crazy, but why does anyone care at this point?  Yeah, I know people want to ditch Vista ASAP and I think Microsoft wants to make the transition to, but Windows 7 doesn’t need to be rushed and frankly if Microsoft can ship any Windows release on schedule I’d be shocked.  How many times did Vista get pushed back and/or features cut?

I’ve been trying to find time to write a post about the downfall of HD DVD, but until I can get there here is some food for thought.  The day of native HD DVD support in Media Center is gone, even if released it would likely be useless in the long run.  Native Blu-ray support in Media Center will never come from Microsoft, never.  They will never build anything around Java, which Blu-ray requires.  The wait for native HD media playback within Media Center just grew amazingly long.

Published Fri, Jan 18 2008 18:00 by chrisl
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Comments

# re: Short Bits: Softsled, Windows 7, Native HD DVD/Blu-ray

Actually, I like Vista. It works well for me and my media center is alot more reliable now. I use it at work and at home.

JP

Friday, January 18, 2008 8:29 PM by Jeffrey Peterson

# re: Short Bits: Softsled, Windows 7, Native HD DVD/Blu-ray

The problem is Vista has got beaten in the press, and getting away from Vista is what Microsoft needs to do.

I've got Vista running on my new PC, and your right it's not bad at all.  On older hardware, it sucks IMHO.  That said, it makes no difference what a few people think.  The majority of people think Vista sucks (right or wrong).  Getting Windows 7 out the door is the only way to get around that.

Friday, January 18, 2008 8:32 PM by chrisl

# re: Short Bits: Softsled, Windows 7, Native HD DVD/Blu-ray

No Softsled ever? Ok Then please tell me how to watch LIVE TV on my laptop when sitting on the porch using a wireless G network.

Friday, January 18, 2008 9:45 PM by SouthPaw

# re: Short Bits: Softsled, Windows 7, Native HD DVD/Blu-ray

You do by MS adding resourse sharing into VMC. You've got one VMC system server with all the tuners and it's capable of streaming live TV content through out the house to networked VMC systems. This is how I always imagined "softsled" as working and I'm terribly suprised that MS hasn't gotten the message that this is a much needed feature (one that I am leaving VMC because of).

Friday, January 18, 2008 10:07 PM by Crim

# re: Short Bits: Softsled, Windows 7, Native HD DVD/Blu-ray

Southpaw I agree with you - the only way to do this today is with Webguide.

Friday, January 18, 2008 10:25 PM by Wayne

# re: Short Bits: Softsled, Windows 7, Native HD DVD/Blu-ray

re:  No BluRay in MediaCenter

This is another example of MS being stubborn and not giving consumers what they want and need (see my comments on Softsled on TGB).  No BluRay in MCE will seem absolutely ridiculous in about 5 years when DVD is pretty much obsolete for high end Home Theaters.  But then again, I use TheaterTek for DVD playback today!

Friday, January 18, 2008 10:36 PM by Wayne

# re: Short Bits: Softsled, Windows 7, Native HD DVD/Blu-ray

On Blu-ray, I think it's the opposite from what you think Wayne.  I'll explain more in another post.

Saturday, January 19, 2008 8:48 AM by chrisl

# re: Short Bits: Softsled, Windows 7, Native HD DVD/Blu-ray

I'm happy to skip physical media HD entirely.  If we could get the Marketplace, iTunes or Amazon to allow DRM-free HD purchases I'd be happy.  No physical media, no packaging waste, less environmental impact, etc.

Given how few consumers even have HD TVs, much less a real understanding of HD DVD or BluRay there is a chance neither format will catch on and we'll leap right into digital content.

Saturday, January 19, 2008 10:38 AM by Shawn Oster

# re: Short Bits: Softsled, Windows 7, Native HD DVD/Blu-ray

Studio's are not going to cave on video DRM anytime soon, so don't expect anyone to have valuable DRM-free video content.

Saturday, January 19, 2008 10:47 AM by chrisl

# re: Short Bits: Softsled, Windows 7, Native HD DVD/Blu-ray

I don't really know enough about HD DVD and Blu-ray (frankly,  I don't care who wins as long as someone does).  However, I don't understand why Blu-ray requires Java?  Surely it's just a format for holding data, so the code to retrive and decode that data could be written in anything.. Java, C#,  Cobol... Who cares?! As I say, I don't know much about about the whole issue (I don't like big screens, and my little 28" LCD won't be noticeably better with HD content anyway).  I'd be interested in the whole Java issue once you get the time to write your HD DVD vs Blu-ray article! (in the meanwhile, I'm off to Google to find out more!).

Saturday, January 19, 2008 3:50 PM by Adam

# re: Short Bits: Softsled, Windows 7, Native HD DVD/Blu-ray

Until I get to writing the article, quickly Blu-ray uses what is called BD-J for interactivity.  That can also include basic operations like menu selection.  HD DVD uses HDi (iHD) which was actually developed by Microsoft and Disney (though, Disney only supports BD).

Saturday, January 19, 2008 4:23 PM by chrisl

# re: Short Bits: Softsled, Windows 7, Native HD DVD/Blu-ray

But Windows can already run Java apps, why would it be such a problem to have the Blu Ray version of Java running in Windows?

Sunday, January 20, 2008 11:55 PM by Al

# re: Short Bits: Softsled, Windows 7, Native HD DVD/Blu-ray

When native playback is the question what the OS can support really doesn't matter.  There is a lot of integration that would need to take place, and Microsoft wanted to use what they developed and not Java.  And it is more than just locally in Media Center.  Think Extenders too.

Monday, January 21, 2008 8:03 AM by chrisl

# re: Short Bits: Softsled, Windows 7, Native HD DVD/Blu-ray

I am not too concerned about blu-ray.  I want everything on my hard drive.  I thought Managed Copy might be cool but it sounds dead. Both HD-DVD and Blu-ray use similar codecs.  Just give me MPEG-4. The format war is really about the physical disk itself.  

For the most part, I have given up on the notion that a HTPC will have all my movies. I am beginning to see no real point in buying movies. I have realized I do not consume them that way.  It would be great to have a 1080p download rental service.

Monday, January 21, 2008 9:42 AM by Kevin

# re: Short Bits: Softsled, Windows 7, Native HD DVD/Blu-ray

You know I am not sure about this.  When HD-DVD goes the way of the dodo, BluRay will be the standard.  At the end of the day Microsoft is in the business to sell software.  So if Bluray is the standard how can they realistically not support it? That would totally open the door for competitors in the media center sector, and we al know how much Microsoft likes competition.

Saturday, January 26, 2008 10:01 AM by Nick

# re: Short Bits: Softsled, Windows 7, Native HD DVD/Blu-ray

Since the new "tru2way" standard also relies on Java for interactivity, will Microsoft never work with the new CableCards?

Monday, January 28, 2008 5:58 PM by Sean

# re: Short Bits: Softsled, Windows 7, Native HD DVD/Blu-ray

tru2way (aka CableCARD 2.0) does indeed specify Java (OCAP) for use with interactive applications, however years ago Microsoft submitted .NET to CableLabs in order to provide them a way to do the same stuff using their own libraries.  I assume this was approved, and yes Microsoft will have tru2way support in Windows Vista as soon as CableCARDs finishes the BOCR standard that the two have been working on for a long time.  Those BOCR tuners will also likely use a distributed version of OCAP, which means part will be local on the PC and part will be running within the PC.

Now, had Microsoft been able to get their own technology into BD-J, Microsoft wouldn't be in this situation.  However, they had a competing product (iHD) that didn't get approved by the BDA.  At this point, the BDA can't approve anything new like iHD to Blu-ray because it would break compatibility with all existing players (those may or may not be able to be updated).

When this stuff is planned for, it's somewhat easy to deal with.

Monday, January 28, 2008 6:10 PM by chrisl