Yesterday I have noticed that the Windows Media Center web site has added an Silverlight application that is showing how the Windows Media Center on Windows Vista is working. Hey, I did this with one of the first beta versions of Silverlight, but not as impressive as the demo.

Well, since Silverlight has streaming support in HD quality I had expected that there is at least one video in the recorded TV section that could be watched, but there isn’t any. When you go to live TV you can see a video running, that’s similar to the recorded TV sessions.

Microsoft, how cool would it be to have Windows Media Center as a role or feature in Windows Server 2008 (maybe SP1..2 or a feature pack) with an web application that is using Silverlight to get the Windows Media Center application to all of my Windows PCs, Windows Mobile devices (and Macs or S60 mobile phones I don’t have)?

What do you think about this? Please, think about it as there are more Windows Media Center users waiting for something similar!!

4 Comments

• eenigmaster said Thursday, November 13, 2008 1:09:45 PM

  Well, that is a good idea. A Windows Server hosting a Windows Media Center web interface, and clients are accessing that using browsers with Silverlight. Bandwidth could be an issue, but that will be an excellent model for LAN networks at least. Silverlight rocks!

• Michael Schwarz said Thursday, November 13, 2008 3:41:26 PM

  I've bought a XBox360 to view videos and photos from my Vista machine. With a good Gigabit network you should not have any problems viewing with 2-3 concurrent users. Does anybody have some details how much bandwidth Windows Media Center needs for videos in HD? Silverlight HD videos are working great with less than 10 MBit/s (DSL lines).

• merdzd said Tuesday, December 2, 2008 10:45:09 AM

  And vista PC as extender for mediacenterHomeserver2008 Would not it be great?

• JohnCz said Saturday, January 3, 2009 12:19:10 AM

  I think you'll see something along these lines with the next release of Windows Home Server (2010).