Pete Stagman one of the authors of the DVD streaming guide has responded to Charlie Owen’s personal thoughts on why DVD streaming will never be a feature of Media Center. Pete is disappointed that this feature has never been or never will be added to Media Center and his responses make interesting reading. I am converting some of my kids DVDs to WMV but for most of my DVDs I just play them in the Xbox 360
Charlie Owen recently posted his "unnoficial" take on why Microsoft will not add the functionality. I’ve edited his post for space and to make it easier for me to respond. You can read his entire post here.
Charlie’s reason list and my responses:
1) The usage models for television and movie content is very different from music…We are talking about 1+ hour audio and video content vs. 3 minutes aural only.
So? Are you saying that people never watch movies on their Media Center or in the bedroom, kitchen, family room, kids room because it takes longer than listening to music? Huh?!?
2) Sneakernet is good enough.
No it’s not. I don’t want to carry movies around where they can be damaged. If I want to watch a movie in my kitchen and I already have that movie in DVDLibrary or MyMovies, why should I have to go and get a physical disk?
Continue reading the post on Pete’s blog
Back in the UK for this weeks show. Andrew was away ... 
Better late than never, a special show for you this ... 
Garry and Andrew are back and we talk over the ... 
This week Garry and Andrew were busy so Jason Coombes ... 
Have I fallen off your blogroll Ian?
http://babgvant.com/blogs/andyvt/archive/2008/07/17/maybe-quot-mainstream-quot-isn-t-the-right-target-dvd-streaming.aspx
sorry Andy I did see it and meant to post on it. It was a good read
Hi Ian,
I’m a long-time listener to your podcast, read your blog regularly and follow you on twitter. Really enjoy the HTPC talk from an obvious enthusiast. My requirements for HTPC software include the following:
* Ability to run content from a single server
* Ability to run a client/extender with all functionality of the server, but without the need to duplicate content that is already being served by the server. Softsled (aka software extender) and extenders answer this need.
* Must have excellent PVR functionality
* Must be able to access all content (HD, SD, digital, encrypted etc)
* Must run movies (video files & ripped DVD’s), music and photos served from server and/or other networked drives to all TVs. This can be via another HTPC “client” like softsled or via an extender, but it must be able to run off of the same server as all the other TVs. If I start a tv show, video or song on one TV, I want to be able to stop playback at that TV – go to another TV in the house and simply start back where I left off.
Windows MCE and Vista MC come close to these requirements, but SageTV was the HTPC front-end that gave me what I wanted and met all of those requirements (along with a Hauppauge HD-PVR).
I think Charlie Owens comment on Pete’s blog tells us where Microsoft is coming from. His quote was referring to how small of a group it was that really wants DVD streaming. Here’s an excerpt from Charlie’s comment:
“it’s going to be a drop in the very large worldwide bucket. It may be a large enough audience for a very small company to tackle”
I think this comment by Charlie is in line with the way Microsoft as a whole is thinking on this subject. Lets face it, Microsoft does not want to risk ticking off the media companies for what they perceive to be a very small audience (for Microsoft) in the scheme of things.
This is one of the main reasons I chose to go with SageTV for my HTPC front-end. SageTV sees those of us who want this feature as important and a relatively large market to them. And so it is a feature built into SageTV. Microsoft’s Media Center will never get this feature built-in. This means it will be up to the community to build a workaround/hack to do it and to keep it functional even when Microsoft’s updates (TV Pack for instance) breaks that functionality.
I encourage you to check out SageTV as an alternative HTPC front-end that does provide many great features that will satisfy the most demanding HTPC enthusiast. At least consider covering SageTV once in a while on your blog and podcasts – there are quite a few of us users that would love to see that! Thanks,