The idea of a VMC plug-in “library” (yeah, hate to say it, but like the iPhone store) where for-fee and free apps that are “approved” by some sort of QA process appear would be fantastic.

This would help create an economy around WMC plug-ins, as well as facilitate the concept of MS not having to re-write apps that are already published to the library.

One of the shames of WMC right now is that MS expects you to use Vista’s native OS to install applications for WMC. That’s just not right. I’m using it as my 10 foot experience, fully with a Logitech remote control. I should have no need to have to break out of WMC to install an add-on that will, once installed, be an elegant extension to the WMC environment.

I’ve posted a few times about this on TGB forum, and I will continue to advocate a set of MS APIs that allow developers to let users install apps via the 10-foot GUI. This will go a long way towards making plug-ins more “mainstream.”

WMC is a brilliant personal media management environment. There are just a few of these “last mile” issues that stop it from catching on beyond the perpetual early adopters like us!

Oh, and there’s one more reason why XBox would get this NetFlix addition and not WMC…. The XBox NetFlix solve requires a GOLD membership to LIVE. This means NetFlix features require subscribers to keep their subscriptions alive.

So, truthfully, Microsoft gets a market/revenue advantage from investing in Xbox/NetFlix integration, whereas with WMC, there is no fiscal advantage to MSFT. Arguably, there would be a slight one for NetFlix, though, presuming that WMC owners would purchase a NetFlix account with WatchNow if they had the wherewithall to a) find out about a 3rd party NetFlix plug-in, b) install a 3rd party NetFlix plug-in.

Jon

But I think this suggestion — a plug-in SDK — would be even better. Can we have that, please? Imagine content makers adding their own channels, etc. That’s something not available in the iTunes / AppleTV ecosystem.

All of this said, I do think the Xbox announcement is good news. It’ll be interesting to see the sort of download-focused Xbox versus PS3′s Blu-Ray capability.

Given finite resources however, it would be more efficient for them to spend those developer cycles enhancing their platform, so that instead of just replicating existing functionality in MC it would be easy for others to bring Neflix to other platforms and enhance the existing suppport within MC. Working with the community would benefit everyone. Netflix would get a stable solution for a much lower cost than doing it all themselves, we get the functionality we want, and developers get to develop instead of reverse engineer.

Maybe the real problem is the difficulty around discovering functionality. Hopefully, this is something that MS will address in the future (TGB perhaps); making it easy to find third party applications for MC from MC.

This seems like the very definition of a feature that should graduate from community based plug-in to official release.

It would be better from a support perspective if Netflix would write an addin for MC (they did just hire Andy Park author of MyNetflix, a competing MC addin), but from their perspective why burn the development $$$ when someone will do it for them?

I’d rather both Netflix and MS spent their developer time adding functionality that doesn’t exist then compete with a perfectly good community based application.

Also, the idea of switching to the Xbox media blade and then back to the Media Center for tasks that are strikingly similar seems, well, wrong.

I hope you’re right, but so far none of the other Xbox Live media deliverables aree available to MC owners…

You might even restore the good name to petitions that Infoworld has worked so hard to ruin.

I don’t have a Media Center PC in my living room or bedroom where I might want to watch a Netflix movie. It’s in my office, with extenders in the other rooms. And while Microsoft has now announced a solution for Xbox owners, owners of Media Center Extenders are (so far) out in the cold.