On the live chat we did last night there was a good discussion on whether we will see Sky support for Windows Media Center. The consensus seems to be that Media Center needs to support Sky natively to get better adoption in the UK and even though Microsoft maybe looking at adding H.264 support and the technical pieces to enable Sky there is still the commercial implications. Would Sky want to sacrifice there Set Top Box revenue? It would be nice to think Microsoft and Sky could work out a deal that is reasonable for Media Center users but there has been no evidence of anything yet.
One thing is clear is that Media Center needs to keep up and evolve with the changes in the TV industry, such as HD coming to Freeview. Chris Lanier has a post on Microsoft looking to add Global HDTV support in Media Center.
Some level of integration is possible now e.g. http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/skymceintegration.html but it is a pain to set up and you still need to stick your sky card in your digibox every now and then to stop sky disabling it. You also lose the ability to record 2 channels at once that you get with your digibox.
Maybe Sky can keep it’s revenue by renting a sat tunner like the hdpc-20 rumored by Directv. In Portugal I’m expecting something like this, because all the subscription cards are paired with the Set Top Boxes. So let’s wait and see what’s coming…
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Some level of integration is possible now e.g. http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/skymceintegration.html but it is a pain to set up and you still need to stick your sky card in your digibox every now and then to stop sky disabling it. You also lose the ability to record 2 channels at once that you get with your digibox.
Maybe Sky can keep it’s revenue by renting a sat tunner like the hdpc-20 rumored by Directv. In Portugal I’m expecting something like this, because all the subscription cards are paired with the Set Top Boxes. So let’s wait and see what’s coming…
I am on holiday next week with the family so there will be no posts or podcast, but I will be updating…