7:17pm EDT, Thu Sep 2

Is Microsoft's Answer to Apple TV Already on the Market?

By: The Online Reporter
Publish Date: March 16, 2007

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- 20m Xbox Users Can Activate 'Microsoft TV' - Wavexpress Wraps Its TVTonic Future Around Windows Media Center - Will Video Quality Win Out on the Net? Apple seemingly has all the marketing moxie these days, especially when compared to Microsoft. Remember when Microsoft used to have lines of people around the block waiting to get into a retail store to buy Windows 95? Apple's touch is so good that it has had press, analysts and consumers all gaga about the upcoming Apple TV for months. The $300 product, which was delayed a month for unspecified reasons, will allow users to watch the videos they've downloaded to a PC on their TV set in another room. It's being hailed as the savior of the nascent digital media industry. Michael Sprague, president of Wavexpress, which offers the free TVTonic video service, has another view, saying that Microsoft has already beat Apple to the punch with a device to connect PCs and TV sets. It's called Windows Media Center Extender and the software comes in practically every PC that a consumer is likely to buy these days. Apple TV Media Center PC with Xbox HD DVD no yes DVR recording no yes Multi-disc jukebox support no yes Third-party applications no yes TVTonic lets users subscribe to free Internet "channels" and have the content delivered to their PC in the background, taking advantage of unused bandwidth. TVTonic content is cached on the PC's hard drive, which removes the choppiness associated with streaming video. Media Center offers a remote controlled, set-top-like interface for music, photos, video and television content. The Media Center Extender is a device that will "extend" that functionality to the living room's TVset. All that's needed is to connect the TV set to a Windows Media Center Extender like the one that Linksys makes (model WMCE54AG - $100 at Best Buy) or an Xbox 360, which has the Extender built-in. 20m Installed Base With 20 million Xbox 360s already in consumer homes, there's a large market waiting. When connected, an extender like Xbox and a Media Center PC automatically find each other over a wired or Wi-Fi network. "Media Center" appears on the Xbox "Start" menu, allowing the user to select a video that's on the PC and play it on the TV. Without Xbox or a Media Center Extender, consumers can only use TVTonic on the PC. However, some PCs such as one from Niveus are now designed to go in the "stack" of home entertainment boxes and can be easily connected to use the TV set as the display. When a consumer wants to have the PC display on the TV set, he uses the "TV input" button on the TV's remote control to select the PC for input. And, says Sprague, Media Center plus an Extender or Xbox provides a system that's ahead of what most folks think the Apple TV will offer. That includes being able to use TVTonic's video player, which, Sprague says, delivers HD-video quality as good as anything out there, including the upcoming Joost, which will be a TVTonic rival. The angle for Microsoft here is feature, functionality, maturity and reach. Any and All Internet Video TVTonic has an advantage over Joost because it plays any and all Internet videos, not just those from its content partners. That doesn't include, of course, AAC files that are protected by Apple's FairPlay DRM, something that no one but Apple and one model of a Motorola mobile phone can play. Wavexpress' Sprague was, however, very careful and very specific when he said, "TVTonic cannot now play videos that have been downloaded from iTunes." The operative word appears to be "now." TVTonic also plays QuickTime videos, which is what most video bloggers use. However, Sprague said there appears to be an emerging movement by the video bloggers to add support for Microsoft's Windows Media Video format because they are starting to see the benefit of supporting Windows Media. Video bloggers generally tend to be Apple fanatics since the majority of affordable video production software seems to be made for the Mac. But they also really like the idea of getting their video onto the Xbox and into the living room. The '10-foot' Viewing Experience The goal for TVTonic is to deliver the best "10-foot" viewing experience for videos that are stored on a PC. Because it's tightly integrated with Windows Media Center, including the new Vista version, the TVTonic player, which is a Media Center plug in, can be operated from across the room with the remote control that comes with Windows Media Center PCs. And, because Microsoft now includes Media Center on practically every Windows PC that's sold, chances are that the PC that any consumer, or even small business, purchases comes with Media Center capabilities. Since its inception, Wavexpress has aimed to provide the highest quality video. To that end, content is delivered in the background and cached on the PC's hard drive where it'll be ready to view, even if it's still downloading. In that sense, TVTonic is more like podcasting than streaming. Sprague says that despite some of the amateurish stuff that's on YouTube, the quality of entertainment video on the Net has been on the rise the past few years. Of course, one can't forget that YouTube's success, according to many, has been largely built on the illegal sharing of copyrighted content. Thus the billion-dollar lawsuit that Viacom filed this week. There has been a surge of quality videos being produced for Internet distribution that don't carry copyright restrictions, said Sprague. There is also growing momentum for clearing traditional television productions for availability on the Internet. HD In, HD Out; No HD In, No HD Out In the PC space, the high-definition issue is very fuzzy, according to Sprague, and videophiles have a million opinions on the subject. If the PC has a fast processor, a "crisp" monitor (as most computer screens and new TVs now are) and ample bandwidth or disk capacity, HD quality can be displayed. Enabling HD over the Internet is just a matter of bandwidth, if streamed, or disk capacity, if cached. Apple TV will support HD playback just as well as Windows does. HD quality, however the term is defined for a PC, also depends, of course, on the camera that was used to make the video and on the encoding. TVTonic supports WMV formats so it's capable of quite high video fidelity. TVTonic plays in full-screen mode on Vista PCs. The company has worked to achieve an experience much like television, where video is always the primary image. To that end, it designed an interface that always maintains a full-screen video picture. With new tools available in Vista, the company was able to develop interactive menus as subtle overlays on top of the video. The viewer can then navigate through the available channels and interactive elements without ever leaving the primary video display. Rocketboom, which is a TVTonic partner, now shoots and encodes all its episodes in high-def. Gametrailers.com, which offers a lot of original content, also shoots and encodes much of its stuff in HD quality. TVTonic currently promotes 300 handpicked channels that, it says, are the best media brands freely available through the Internet. A significant number of these are signed to revenue-share agreements with Wavexpress, which is continuing to sign up more content partners. Current partners include: - The AP News - Hollywood.com - Ziff Davis - Revision3 - Rocketboom - Music videos from Astralwerks, Sub Pop, TVT, Mute, Victory and the like Reportedly Microsoft, perhaps sensing the potential boom in sales of entertainment PCs, has set aside one-third of its marketing budget for Media Center. After all, Microsoft already practically owns the corporate market, especially for desktop and laptop PCs, but faces stiff competition in the home entertainment market from the likes of Apple, Linux-based boxes like media servers and DVRs themselves, which the pay-TV services are touting as home media hubs in competition with PCs. Riding the Microsoft Marketing Bull Microsoft's focus on home entertainment is benefiting TVTonic. So happy is the software giant with TVTonic's results, it appears, that it's promoting TVTonic and its content partners. Media Center laptops with big screens are very popular, according to Sprague - the traveling workingman cannot live by work alone, it seems - with some nice models in the $1,000 range. There's a little-noticed, but perhaps significant, enhancement to Vista Media Center that will interest mediaphiles with big wallets. It supports multi-disc CD/DVD jukeboxes - the kind that hold as many as 400 discs. Each CD and DVD shows up in the Media Center's library. There is no TVTonic for Macintosh computers. So, comparing Media Center with Xbox or an Extender with what's publicly known about Apple TV shows: Sprague points out that Media Center has the "maturity" that comes from Microsoft having spent four years developing and honing it. Competition TVTonic doesn't compete directly with Akimbo's Internet-based video- on-demand service, Sprague said, because the Akimbo service was developed for videos that were originally produced for TV. iTunes, Joost, AOL's In2TV and other sites that offer streams and video downloads are also not direct competitors to TVTonic, he said. TVTonic is focused on bringing videos that have been developed for the Net to the television. That could, of course, include the kind of 90-second episodes that Michael Eisner's Vuguru announced this week. Ultimately, of course, all video distribution operations are competitors, vying for the consumer's time and attention. Each has its own ideas on how best to reach and then entertain the end user. What it comes down to will be which service is the most accessible and the most enjoyable. Sprague believes there's room in the market for a number of providers - and each different flavor will attract a different audience at different times - much like the many TV content networks compete today. YouTube and other video sharing sites are not direct competitors either, according to Sprague, again because people aren't likely to watch them on the living room TV. The key question that best elicits TVTonic's role, said Sprague, is "Can it keep someone entertained in the living room for 15-20 minutes?" If so, he said, then TVTonic has accomplished its mission. Box Notes Linksys - The Linksys model WMCE54AG Extender currently works with XP Media Center Edition and Linksys says support for Vista is coming soon. We could not find any other Media Center Extenders, aside from, of course, the Xbox 360. Niveus PCs - Niveus says its three Media Centers PC models are the quietest because they have no fans. They also have a sleek design that makes them look like other home audio-video gear - and they fit in the home's AV stack. Niveus says they have the kind of fidelity that's expected from high-end audio video gear. All three models are capable of storing, managing and playing television, music, radio, movies and photos. The Rainier Edition uses Intel's Viiv technology and optionally supports HD DVD movie playback. The Denali Edition has a high-end amplifier; 192 Khz/24-bit, eight- channel audiophile sound; 720p/1080i grade HDTV; 1TB of storage and runs on the Viiv Intel Core 2 Duo. The Denali Limited Edition has Pro A/V and an HD DVD drive.