Would You Put Your Digital Life in the Hands of a Cable Box?

WMC TV Pack: The Ultimate Windows Screwjob You Didn’t See Coming

Robert McLaws: Windows Vista Edition — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 03:36:16 GMT

Introduction Before I go into this post, I have to explain my intentions. I respect NDAs very much, and

re: Would You Put Your Digital Life in the Hands of a Cable Box?

Ian Ringrowse — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:19:30 GMT

I rather that my backup device did not run any software from Microsoft and that there was NO way to delete anything from the backup device without pressing a physical button on the device to confirm the delete.

My PCs runs Windows that I am very happy with, however the largest risk to my “irrecoverable elements of my digital life” is a fast spreading warm that deletes data on all Microsoft Windows base devices, hence I wish my backup system not to have anything in common with my desktop system.

Likewise If I was running Linux on the desktop, I would want a backup device that did not use any type of Unix OS.

(If my cable company did a cheap offsite easy to use backup system that I trusted, I would be very temped with it. However the master copy of everything would still be on my PC.)

re: Would You Put Your Digital Life in the Hands of a Cable Box?

Stuart — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 03:20:12 GMT

I'd really like to see Microsoft offer WMC as an AppleTV like device instead of a full-fledged Windows PC. I have NEVER had any real use for the PC functionality of my Media Center PC system. I would, however, like to see a WMC box that can network to any system on the network, including a WHS box. MCE's are an intriguing idea but I'm not all that happy about the noise issue with my XBOX360, making it less than ideal for use as an extender. Just build WMC into stand alone boxes (steal the Mac Mini or AppleTV internals design to keep the thing quite) but add a slot loading DVD/Blu-Ray drive and swappable internal hard drive/USB for adding external storage if you aren't running on a network or just want to keep all the TV stuff with the TV and not on the home PC. WMC is a truly amazing system, it just needs to be uncoupled from Windows and the notion of running a full blow PC to get MC functionality.

re: Would You Put Your Digital Life in the Hands of a Cable Box?

John Obeto — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 21:51:28 GMT

You have your favorite shows DRV'd on DirectTV.

You then decide to change providers to Dish Network/Comcast/<insert any provider here>.

Erhh, what happens to your content?

I'll wait until you stop shuddering in fear.

Need I say more?

re: Would You Put Your Digital Life in the Hands of a Cable Box?

hank — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:24:09 GMT

To be honest, I'm thinking about moving from cable companies all together. I love watching shows when they come out on DVD sets. No comericals, get to watch as much or as little as you want at one time, and if you get a season, you KNOW you get to watch the whole season. I have a few shows that I would get into, love the show, and then have it canceled so it can be replaced by a reality tv show.

Sure your a year behind... but other then that.. its awesome!

re: Would You Put Your Digital Life in the Hands of a Cable Box?

kettch — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 07:24:15 GMT

I'm kind of the mindset that I can pay the cable/satellite providers to get content to the cabling connectors that I've kindly provided them on the outside of my house. After that, they can piss off.

I would love to see WHS get equipped with some sort of media server functionality. It would basically need to act as the backend for media center PC's, and extenders like the extender STB's and XBox's. At first I can deal with it just providing storage, but eventually it would be nice to have it house several (like as many as I want :D) tuners. I'd also like to be able to be able to move streams between extenders. That would mean that I could be watching something from my media center PC in the living room and decide it's time to make dinner. So, I should be able to hit pause and disconnect my living room pc from the stream, walk into the kitchen, and have the extender box in there be able to pick up the paused stream from the server and continue playing.