Microsoft Drops "Internet TV" from Windows Media Center

[darcilicious]

So, Microsoft will be discontinuing the "Internet TV" section of Windows Media Center as of Sept 20, 2012.

Instead, they cheerfully point out you can use your browser

[samgreco]

Wow. What is this, the 20th century? I wish I could understand M$'s thinking.

I decided to go online and drop cable months ago and have been so frustrated trying to get a workable & usable interface in Sage to view online content. I had considered switching to MCE for that reason. So I guess this kills that.

As much as I love the functionality of Playon and evil's plugin, it is just so cumbersome. My wife hates it. We end up have to go sometimes 10 or 12 layers in to get to what we want to watch.

Maybe the answer is a Roku or something....

[darcilicious]

I'm not sure it's MS's doing -- it might be the content providers / networks studios...

[matterofrecord]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

I'm not sure it's MS's doing

I think MS is trying to ditch media center. Media PC's haven't really taken off to the "one in every living room" standard that MS had hoped for. Most people use off the shelf consumer devices or network provided equipment ( drm and all that ) for recording and web catch-up services are getting more and more common. MS has also cut media center from windows 8 ( unless you pay a fee of course ).

The bigger problem is that a lack of MS media center will mean less of a demand for new tv tuners ( and if sagetv comes back less demand for a better alternative )

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

I'm not sure it's MS's doing -- it might be the content providers / networks studios...

you got that right. Let's see - Comcast owns Universal...etc etc etc. They don't want their cash-cow 1970's cable-company-technology to go anywhere. Can you blame them? They've got 300 million suckers on the line and they aren't going to go down easily.
Can you imagine the stonewall that Apple and Google are facing with their new technologies?
We are forever stuck with the ridiculous "bundled" channel packages. Sad

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by matterofrecord

I think MS is trying to ditch media center. Media PC's haven't really taken off to the "one in every living room" standard that MS had hoped for. Most people use off the shelf consumer devices or network provided equipment ( drm and all that ) for recording and web catch-up services are getting more and more common. MS has also cut media center from windows 8 ( unless you pay a fee of course ).

The bigger problem is that a lack of MS media center will mean less of a demand for new tv tuners ( and if sagetv comes back less demand for a better alternative )

I imagine Hauppauge won't be happy about this

[matterofrecord]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

I imagine Hauppauge won't be happy about this

Good

! rant warning !
I've stopped caring what hauppauge thinks. The uk customer support is poor and they even removed my nova t500's xp bsod fix link from their help forum. The tuners works with any software but they get poor reception and often produce broken recordings. I still have one hauppauge tuner in my machine and when I can afford to replace it I will consider it an wonderful exorcism . / not bitter in any way / besides quad tuners is where it's at nowadays.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

I imagine Hauppauge won't be happy about this

Ceton is probably in more trouble than Hauppauge. At least Hauppauge has the gamer market to fall back on. Ceton's business is almost entirely focused on WMC, and they're investing quite a bit of money in the the Q and Echo product lines given that they're essentially built around EOL products.

(side note: It's actually not entirely WMC. Apparently their cablecard tuners are used in commercial environments to decrypt channels and deliver them over clearQAM. Still, I bet Ceton is more heavily invested in WMC than Hauppauge is.).

[wayner]

Internet TV was only available in the US and the UK, and apparently the UK version was very weak. I set up my (Canadian) PC as being US based and used a VPN-like service to get around IP filtering to be able to use Internet TV. So given the nature of having to work with the content providers and having to does this separately in each market MS probably felt that it just wasn't worth it anymore.

Does this announcement mean that there will be an update that will remove internet TV.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by samgreco

As much as I love the functionality of Playon and evil's plugin, it is just so cumbersome. My wife hates it. We end up have to go sometimes 10 or 12 layers in to get to what we want to watch.

What is the state of tmiranda's PodcastRecorder in conjunction with Playon?

FWIW, I use a home-grown solution (consisting of linux shell and perl scripts) that pre-dates this plugin to "record" from Playon, comskip the result, and add SageTV metadata. This works quite well, aside from the normal Playon issues (video got really bad when they force-upgraded to Flash 11.x a few months back).

Drew

[SWKerr]

They are moving to the Xbox for Online content but this probably has more to do with content providers refusal to license them anything useful in Media Center. The current offering are useless crap like previews etc. With the exception of Netflix you have to leave Media Center to find any decent content now anyway.

Hopefully Centon can work out something with YOuTube, Hulu etc to create MC plugins like Netflix. Otherwise it is not much more than a DVR.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by drewg

What is the state of tmiranda's PodcastRecorder in conjunction with Playon?

Works for us. Wife uses it all the time.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

They are moving to the Xbox for Online content but this probably has more to do with content providers refusal to license them anything useful in Media Center.

Hmmm.. The fact that online content access via Xbox360 brings MS ~$40/yr via Xbox live subscriptions couldn't have anything to do with that could it....?

Drew

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Works for us. Wife uses it all the time.

Regular podcasts work fine. PlayOn is hit and miss. If more people are interested I'd consider working on it more to increase the reliability. So far there really hasn't been a lot of interest (which actually surprised me, I thought this plugin would be more popular?)

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

I'm not sure it's MS's doing -- it might be the content providers / networks studios...

If it were purly content providers then wouldn't the Roku and like devices be on there outs as well? I mean that's pretty much all they do ...

[darcilicious]

Originally Posted by Skybolt

If it were purly content providers then wouldn't the Roku and like devices be on there outs as well? I mean that's pretty much all they do ...

Roku doesn't get current episodes off the networks studio websites as far as I know (like WMC does/did). You typically have to go through Hulu for that, and then you can only use Hulu+ which actually has LESS episodes then the free version via a web browser.

But maybe I've overlooked something?

[SWKerr]

Originally Posted by Skybolt

If it were purly content providers then wouldn't the Roku and like devices be on there outs as well? I mean that's pretty much all they do ...

Those devices still allow the content providers substantial control of the environment and the experience. I don't think this change would prevent content providers from developing their own plug-in (like Netflix) but I doubt any will. The Internet TV solution just gave Microsoft too much control without any additional revenue for the content people.

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

Roku doesn't get current episodes off the networks studio websites as far as I know (like WMC does/did). You typically have to go through Hulu for that, and then you can only use Hulu+ which actually has LESS episodes then the free version via a web browser.

But maybe I've overlooked something?

Nope, I wasn't thinking in terms of Hulu. I don't use it myself. But you bring up a good point. This will be something to watch (unforunetly)

[drewg]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Regular podcasts work fine. PlayOn is hit and miss. If more people are interested I'd consider working on it more to increase the reliability. So far there really hasn't been a lot of interest (which actually surprised me, I thought this plugin would be more popular?)

Playon is hit or miss in general, no matter how you use it. One thing that is somewhat problematic is that the UPNP location for the same show sometimes changes, probably based on how the providers categorize their web sites.

I recently realized that my terrible playon glitching after the flash 11 forced upgrade is limited to hulu, and that comedy central looks fine, so I switched getting the daily show from hulu to comedy central. When doing so, I realized that the show had moved from where it was the last time. Eg, before:

UPnP2Podcast  'PlayOn:Comedy Central:Full Episodes:The Daily Show with Jon Stewart:+2'  > feed.xml     /var/media/videos/daily 1

to

UPnP2Podcast 'PlayOn:Comedy Central:Episodes:The Daily Show with Jon Stewart:+3' > feed.xml     /var/media/videos/daily 1

This kind of thing seems to happen a few times per show per year. Maybe that's what the "hit or miss" problem is for you?

Drew

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by drewg

Playon is hit or miss in general, no matter how you use it. One thing that is somewhat problematic is that the UPNP location for the same show sometimes changes, probably based on how the providers categorize their web sites.

I recently realized that my terrible playon glitching after the flash 11 forced upgrade is limited to hulu, and that comedy central looks fine, so I switched getting the daily show from hulu to comedy central. When doing so, I realized that the show had moved from where it was the last time. Eg, before:

UPnP2Podcast  'PlayOn:Comedy Central:Full Episodes:The Daily Show with Jon Stewart:+2'  > feed.xml     /var/media/videos/daily 1

to

UPnP2Podcast 'PlayOn:Comedy Central:Episodes:The Daily Show with Jon Stewart:+3' > feed.xml     /var/media/videos/daily 1

This kind of thing seems to happen a few times per show per year. Maybe that's what the "hit or miss" problem is for you?

Drew

Could be. The biggest issue is that this was the first Java code I wrote and it's terrible, hence hard to debug. When I look at it I say to myself "what the hell were your thinking?"

It was a good learning experience.