When DIRECTV announced the Media Center tuner work had been suspended we all wondered what had gone on for a project that has been in the works for over two years to get suspended so close to being ready. Chris Lanier has posted a time line of the events around the project and some thoughts on what went wrong

Now that DIRECTV has suspended development on their HDPC-20 Tuner where does that leave us? There are a lot of differing opinions going around about why DIRECTV canned the tuner, whose fault it is, and where do we go from here. Most people are pointing the finger at Microsoft, and with their history of releases how could you not? This doesn’t mean however that Microsoft is totally at fault, but let’s look at the whole situation to see how we got here.

My take on it (and was also told to me by someone outside of Microsoft that understands these things) is that DIRECTV decided enough was enough, they didn’t want to spend any more on the project which has potentially limited value them. Maybe Windows Media Center still does not have enough penetration to be mainstream.

0 thoughts on “Chris Lanier on DIRECTV and Microsoft: What Went Wrong”
  1. It’s too bad, really. I only learned about this after the project was cancelled. It sounds like it could have been very exciting and I would have seriously considerd switching back to DirecTV (depending on how it was actually implemented, and of course cost).

  2. I was keeping DirecTV because I thought this was coming out. I will probably go to AT&T U-verse because I’m able to bundle my bill with television, phone and internet.

    Not sure why DirecTV wants to live in the past. They will lose market sure with this type of attitude.

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