Thanks for the clarification.  Good to hear from the source.

Carl....notice anything missing from the Movies strip in the pic?

richard1980

Carl....notice anything missing from the Movies strip in the pic?

I did notice that. Maybe that was the My Movies strip? :) 

and if it is true, why don't they just close my ticket with no resolution? 

Who do we write to about this? They need to hear us lout and clear that the investment - of the "1%" is still ALOT of customers and is 1/2 that of the entire Apple computer base!

I certainly noticed that Netflix was missing from the "Movies" strip: I imagine this is in favor of the Netflix metro app for the metro interface.  So maybe Media Center is changed in Windows 8 - less functionality!

It's dead. It'll be in W8 but won't be any different than W7. Here's an article from today with the bad news: www.neowin.net/.../latest-windows-8-consumer-preview-build-number-8225

If you read the comments you'll find this gem from DotF that may lead to some incite as to why:

"The mediacenter team were just a bunch of jerks when Vista and Win7 were being developed.

They refused to switch from their single use xml declarative language for UI design to something the rest of the corporation jumped on to right away.

I would expect Media center to die completely at some point, with the libraries needed for things like tuner access, metadata retrieval etc moved to the Windows Runtime.

MCML must DIE

XAML for the win!"

Now that said I also heard the DevDiv guys were a bunch of jerks and that's why WinDiv built WinRT. I was at //Build this year and I have to say that the WinDiv guys were the biggest jerks making abitrary decisions and then trying to show you how you are wrong for not liking them. They were constantly jamming C++/HTML/JS down our throats. One of their lead guys got on the big stage trying to get applause for all of those C++ devs out there; [crickets]. So sad. Microsoft is certainly in for a long downhill ride with the day being ruled by office politics.

I am quite confident the guts of media center are in the new OS.  The question is what UI will be used to access and display content.  My suspicion is that the old UI is there to maintain parity untill either MS or more likely someone else provides a Metro UI to access content.  What i am more interested to know is will MS leverage the deals they have done on XBOX wrt folks like fios / xfinity / etc so we have kickass metro apps that work well for 10ft UI.

I am certain ceton would not have done a Windows 7 based DVR unless they thought there would be a long term roadmap... for one i can't wait for low cost ARM powered media center DVRs.....

Kojacked

It's dead.....If you read the comments ...., with the libraries needed for things like tuner access, metadata retrieval etc moved to the Windows Runtime

This doesn't mean the MediaCenter is dead-- just the language and possibly UI as we know it today.  That's no different then when MediaCenter switches from XPMCE to the MCML we know with VMC & 7MC.

It might be a long shot, but I do want to see a few new features: http://bit.ly/yGhF0i

Subtitle support, multiple audio tracks, MKV support, Zune marketplace integration, 500x500 album art, a TV library that mirrors what's in my Zune TV library, etc.

There is a lot new features I would love to see myself... It just stinks on what the current word on the web is on it...

I don't think you will ever see anything new in Media Center, so don't hold your breath.

Microsoft is most likely developing a comprehensive entertainment platform that will merge online TV and other media with gaming, but that will be based on the XBox platform.  They may someday make a TV app for the XBox that will access a Windows-based PC with a tuner card, storage, and DVR service in order to get to your broadcast (cable, satellite, etc.) TV on the XBox, and they may port that TV app to the Windows 8 Metro UI.  But I don't think the Media Center platform will ever see improvements, fixes, etc., which effectively makes it dead.

So Xbox live has been included in Window 8 - I've not used Xbox live, is this the replacement for Windows Media Center?

No.  Windows Media Center is in Windows 8.  I have it running right now.

Is there anything different? Surely Xbox live has to offer something - doesn't it have load of integration from content providers? Netflix for example

Everything appears to be exactly the same as in Windows 7 including Netflix.