Media Center Confirmed In Windows 8

For all those wondering whether Microsoft will include Media Center with Windows 8 - the answer is yes.

Media Center will not be in the first pre-release Windows 8 builds, Sinofsky acknowledged. Neither will some other features and capabilities, including Windows 7 games, DVD Creator, upgrade setup and “Dot Net 3.5″ — which means .Net 3.5 — I guess? (Not sure why he’s talking about .Net 3.5, when supposedly .Net 4.5 is being rolled out alongside Windows 8, according to what I’ve heard.)

Sinofsky said the rollout cadence was both an engineering and a business decision. He explained:

“Knowing how strong the support for Media Center is among pre-release testers, we still have work to do to make sure the quality and compatibility with add-ins is what you would expect even in pre-release (as with any release of Windows, compatibility is a major effort and when we work on the underlying video engine, as one example, we have to make sure features that push these areas receive adequate coverage).”

He also noted that the different editions, or SKUs, are not typically developed or announced until closer to market availability. (I guess that’s “confirmation” that there will be more than one Windows 8 SKU, as I’d expected, but many had hoped would NOT be the case, preferring Microsoft to take more of an Apple-like approach.) With Windows 7, Media Center was part of three SKUs, not all of them.

Media Center is not one of Windows’ oft-used features, according to Microsoft’s own telemetry data. In fact, in July, Media Center was launched by 6% of Windows 7 users globally with the heaviest usage in Russia, Mexico, and Brazil (in terms of both frequency and time), Sinofsky said. And even when the feature was launched, most users were “just looking around,” he added, with only one quarter (25% of 6%) of these people using it for more than 10 minutes per session.

“Interestingly, the feedback about Media Center was predominantly “we will pay extra, just include it” based on the input directly to me,” Sinofsky said.

source: Mary-Jo-Foley: www.zdnet.comwww.zdnet.com