Microsoft on Thursday unveiled details about upcoming extenders for its Windows Media Center intended to allow seamless transitions between home computers, TVs and other home media devices.
The extenders will be launched by Cisco, D-Link and Niveus and will be available starting in November, Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices eHome Division, said at the Digital Life conference in Manhattan.
The Cisco and D-Link devices will range in price from $300 to $350, but pricing information for the more high-end Niveus product has not yet been revealed.
Microsoft originally launched the Media Center Extender for Windows XP in 2004-2005, and followed it up with the Media Center Extender for the Xbox 360. The idea is to allow consumers to take media viewed on one device like a PC and transition it seamlessly to another, like a home TV or online personal network.
"People can create their own experiences [and] we do the work through extender of making it show up on every TV in the house," Belfiore said.
The DMA2200 Media Center extender with DVD Player from Linksys, a division of Cisco, provides extender capability with a built-in DVD player. It will retail for $349.99.
The idea is to have the device "tag along with other devices so you're not increasing the number of boxes you switch between," Belfiore said.
For those who do not need a DVD player, however, the more compact DMA2100 version provides a dual-band wireless-N solution and intended for smaller areas like the bedroom. It will set consumers back $299.99.
The DSM-750 extender from D-Link is housed in a 17-inch, black aluminum chassis and connects to a home network via Ethernet or dual-band draft wireless-N networking. It supports Windows Media video DivX and XVid formats and includes a USB 2.0 port for removable USB flash and hard drive access. It will retail for $349.99.
The DSM-750 "will support wide range of content," Belfiore said. "It is totally silent, no fan [and is] fast enough for photos, music and high def video."
The Niveus device is intended for more high-end, home theater owners. It will include 1080p video, digital audio, an internal cooling system and the 3-D user interface found on the Niveus Media Center.
The new extenders will be available in the U.S. in November, Belfiore said.
Representatives from Hewlett-Packard were on hand earlier in the morning to announce that its HP MediaSmart LCD HD TV's will support the new extenders from Microsoft. "This will be the first high-def TV that will have media extenders built-in and available from the TV itself," said Phil McKinney, vice president and chief technology officer for HP's personal systems group.
HP's MediaSmart TVs are currently on sale, but the extender software from Microsoft will not be available until early 2008. Televisions purchased before those updates are released will be automatically updated early next year, McKinney said.
In addition to the extenders, Microsoft on Thursday launched a beta Internet TV offering that will be available to all U.S. customers running Windows Vista Media Center.
The service will allow users to view TV content without a tuner in the PCs. The streaming video content – which will include concert footage, movie trailers, news segments from MSNBC, sports clips from Fox Sports and episodes of TV shows like "Arrested Development" – will be ad-supported.
Source: PC MAG