Last year Windows Embedded Standard Edition SP1 was released one of the big things for Media Center enthusiast was the inclusion of Windows Media Center and the option to build set top boxes with the platform.  At CES 2011 Microsoft had a demo room full of Windows Media Center Embedded systems where the potential of an Embedded version of Windows Media Center was shown off, the Windows Embedded team had added some nice features to Media Center and since there doesn’t seem to be anyone in the Media Center team at Microsoft anymore they were the only ones doing any work on the platform.

So it’s doesn’t look to good for Media Center that the set top box template and the Media Center components are not present in the CTP build of Windows 8 Embedded.  It could be that the components will be added in a future build but its not a good signal to send out to OEMs looking at using Media Center in a set top box. One thing to note is that there are WTV codecs listed in the build so a embedded device could playback WTV files in Windows Media Player.

To me it looks like Windows Media Center Embedded is no more, there is nothing in this build and from the lack of news coming out of this years CES I doesn’t look good.

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Set Top Box option in Windows Embedded Standard 7

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No set top box option in Windows 8 Embedded

2 thoughts on “Microsoft killing off Windows Media Center Embedded?”
  1. Maybe someone here can help me out. here is my problem:
    I did the xbox update a few weeks ago for the new console interface and it worked fine and it was working fine as an extender. Just recently I updated my Win 7 to SP1 and now my xbox can’t be used to play recorded tv shows or watch live tv anymore. I can view pictures, play music and watch videos I have on my htpc. I can’t beleive that there is no fix released yet. Maybe there are not a ton of people using an xbox as an extender but this should be addressed asap for those who are. I have seen quite a few posts with no solutions other than to reinstall windows.
    I do not have a restore point to use due to my haphazzard house cleaning so right now I can’t use my xbox as an extender, which is the main reason I bought it to begin with.
    If anyone has a fix to this problem, Please post it so we can all benefit.

  2. I wonder if its because there aren’t currently a lot of OEMs releasing systems based on embedded, maybe if this changes, they’ll reconsider.

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