Here’s the answer to yesterday’s quiz:
Believe it or not, Windows 98 was the first Windows version to include built-in TV support. You can see the proof in this screen capture from a review of the (then) brand-new Windows 98 that I wrote for a preview of the new OS in the May 1998 issue of PC Computing:
At the time, I wrote:
Web TV for Windows is the least impressive part of the Broadcast Architecture components that are scheduled to appear in Windows 98. It receives TV signals well enough, but only if you have a card in ATI’s All-in-Wonder line – there are no drivers for other TV tuner cards. (Expect that to change for the first OEM service release of Windows 98.) And there’s no shortage of bugs in the beta version of the Web TV code we looked at.
“Think long-range” was the conclusion. It’s pretty amazing to think that people were working on the features that eventually became Media Center so long ago.
Actually I worked with the BDA platform from prior to its initial release – Windows 95 had these features, and we were streaming IPTV via DVB to win95 using the very first prototype datacasting boards and software from starband and precept IPTV (now Cisco) in 1995/6.