Site Feed of the Day: Matt Goyer's Blog

Today’s Site Feed of the Day is Matt Goyer’s blog. Matt is a program manager with Microsoft working on Media Center. He has a great blog keeping us updated on what’s going on with Media Center and other home theater news. Matt was nice enough to take time out of his busy schedule to do an email interview that you can read below. Matt’s good – I couldn’t get anything out of him on the upcoming update or Longhorn release  Definitely add his blog to your feed list!

How did you get involved with Media Center at Microsoft?

During my last year of college I interviewed with two digital media type groups at Microsoft. One those groups was the Windows Media Center team in the eHome division. After seeing a short demo of Media Center I knew which team I wanted to join :). I've now been with the team for a little over a year and I'm having a blast.

What is your role with Media Center?

I'm a user experience program manager on the Media Center team. This means I manage the design and development of the user interface for a number of features in upcoming versions. Some of these features include DVD playback and our movie portal.

What is your Media Center setup?

At home I have two Media Centers:

- An HP z555

- A custom machine:

SilverStone LC03 case

Intel P4 3.0

Asus motherboard w/digital out

1 GB of RAM

200 GB (ATA) & 300 GB (IDE) Seagate drives

ATI ATSC tuner

ATI Radeon x600 graphics card

2 NTSC tuners (unsure brand and model)

Gyration keyboard and mouse

DVD burner

Both are connected to my Samsung 46" DLP over DVI (I manually swap between the two connections) and my Denon receiver.

And I also have a Media Center Extender in my bedroom connected to a 13" LCD TV from Gateway.

At work I have one Media Center that is nothing more than a Dell GX270 with a TV tuner and better graphics card added. It's connected to a 19" LCD monitor. On occasion I hook up an Extender or hook it up to a small CRT display for test purposes.

What features do you like most about Media Center?

The features I use the most are:

- Recording and playing back OTA ATSC HDTV. Right now I have series recordings setup for The OC, 24 and Grey's Anatomy.

- Playing back my MP3 collection (40+ gigs)

- Playing back DVDs that I get from Netflix.

My favorite feature when I have guests over is the pictures one. Photos just look amazing on a large hidef display with music playing in the background.

What needs improvement?

I would definitely like to see us add native cable support via CableCard as soon as possible. There are also a whole host of other features that I would love to see us add but I'd hate to disclose any of our future plans :). But to be completely honest, today’s version of Media Center meets most of my needs.

How is Microsoft trying to sell Media Center? What is the message?

Microsoft doesn't sell Media Center directly to customers. Instead we sell Media Center to original equipment manufacturers like Dell, Sony and HP who bundle it with their systems which they sell to customers. Regardless, we still market Media Center to end users and I believe our message is that Media Center is the best version of Windows for media entertainment. Whether you’re using Media Center on a laptop or have it connected to a display in your living room; I think of it as the simplest and easiest way to consume your media.

How do you think Media Center fits into the 'digital living room'? Is there room for other devices like Tivo's?

I think Media Centers are well positioned to become the hub of the digital home because they provide the necessary power to drive a vast array of experiences while also combining sufficient storage to keep pace with customers' transition to digital content. Currently Media Centers PCs are being installed in the living room but in the future I'd imagine that the Media Center PC would be installed in a closet somewhere, centralizing a family’s processing and storage needs while Media Center Extenders distribute the media experiences to TVs and other devices through out the home.

I also think that right now that there's definitely room for devices like Tivo. I would even recommend that if someone were looking for a device that just recorded TV then the device for them is a Tivo like device. If however you are serious about music playback, photo viewing, connecting cameras, burning shows to DVD, connecting to services like Napster with your remote control then you need the power, storage and network connectivity of a PC. Unfortunately, that extra functionality currently comes with a significant price premium. However, I believe we will soon begin to see a narrowing of the price gap between living room PCs and consumer electronic digital video recorders.

Can you tell us anything about the update coming out in a littlewhile? What are you hoping will be in the update?

Unfortunately I can't comment on future releases.