In the comments to a previous post, Mart asks a good question:
Any more news on the availability of these extenders?, the Pika 8622L kit from Sigma looks like it’s ready to go - just needs a box and some marketing 8-)… we dont want anything fancy you know, just something that looks … er… a bit like Apple TV.. How soon is that likely???
Good question. I didn’t see a single next-generation extender on the show floor at CES. Sigma Designs was apparently showing off its reference design in a suite at the Hilton, but I didn’t get an invite for that and didn’t find out about the intro till after I got home. (Details in this PDF file, although there doesn’t appear to be anything that wasn’t in Chris Lanier’s write-up from last June.)
Microsoft’s Pika page hasn’t been updated in a while.
Maybe consumer electronics companies looked at the dismal experiences of HP and Linksys with first-generation extenders and decided to sit on their hands until they see whether there’s any demand.
I’m hoping that a slew of new devices will be introduced next week, along with the launch of Windows Vista. But I’m not holding my breath.
7 comments ↓
The reason those v1 extenders didn’t catch on so well in my opinion was the lack of a DVD drive and the cost was a little to high. If those first generation devices had a DVD drive and were $199 or lower, sign me up. I’m looking forward to the 2nd generation devices. I think as long as they are $100 cheaper than an xbox 360 core they should take off. If the cost is marginal to a xbox 360 core there is no way they are going to be that popular.
I think this next generation of extenders is DOA. I’ve heard the DRM in vista to keep the content providers happy is that HD tv couldn’t be played on an extender or an XBOX 360 no matter what. So when I get a cablecard and a new media center (with Vista for HD), I’ll hopefully find one quiet enough and small enough to put in the living room.
Know, I don’t know where you heard that, but I don’t believe it’s true. No V1 extenders will work with Vista, but premium content should be streamable to an Xbox 360 or a v2 extender. The one unanswered issue about the Xbox 360 is its lack of an HDMI output, but rumor has it that will be fixed very soon.
any reason the Microsoft does not come out with a fanless extender from the xbox group?
If it wasn’t for the very very load fan noise I would have bought 3 xbox’s by now?
Come on this is pretty sad, where are the extenders for vista
believe me there is demand
Hey guys, I’m just trying to spread the word about the new community site im trying to build for users of Vista Media Center, It’s just been up and running for at least 2hours now, and the member section and forums are up and running.
If you guys want to help create this community, please come over and maybe post your HTPM setup in our forums just to get some movement to the site, anything else you guys could do would be greatly benifical in anyway…
Note to blog authors : If you can somehow spread the word and give us a shout out that would be awesome, if you want to contact me regarding anything, please email me at contact@philipaustin.co.uk
Thanks again guys,
http://www.thevistamc.com
The Vista MediaCenter Community
Hey Ed. Thanks for the update.
Why does Linksys or HP or another manufacturer have to market it, when plain ol’ beige xbox-looka-like will do just fine.
Cant some overseas manufacturer , like the ones who produce hardware mp3 players, or other such items knock one up based on the Sigma kit?
Hey, they could even make it look like the Apple TV box !
It just needs to be quiet… and have hdmi ….shhhhhhh
Hello out there? any manufacturing companies out there?… helloooooooo….free money, and customer demand waiting…
I guess that it’s not quite as simple as putting the sigma board in a plastic box, I expect that there’s more to it than that or someone would have already done that.
Why isnt Sigma selling them pre-built? - I guess some lawyer saw to that already.
In the uk every company and their dog is producing freeview (digital set top-box decoders) for next to nothing.. surely it’s not past them to pull this off?..
maybe I’ll put one on my christmas 2007 list then.
Personally, I don’t think MS is really selling this feature. All their advertisements of the Xbox 360 revolve around games. Creating a couple advertisements that demonstrate the MCE functionality would at least increase interest in the feature. This should get manufacturers going on developing stand-alone equipment. And then we can get some better content providers for MC.
Now that AMD and ATI are partnered, they probably have the best position to create a really good MCE device that will support Full HD content.
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