Microsoft's decision to release their latest Media Center (sic) software only to its OEM partners has angered the community, according to a leading blogger.
Ian Dixon – of the Digital Lifestyle blog – told TechRadar that Microsoft had left a small but vociferous community disappointed with their limited release of software that had been known by the codename of 'Fiji'.
"There are two problems with Fiji," he said. "The first is the availability; enthusiasts want to have the update in their hands and Microsoft have decided to focus this update on OEMs.
Reasons
"The reason Microsoft have done this, in my opinion, is that 'Fiji' is a significant change to the core of Windows Media Center and due to the massive variety of hardware out in the wild MS thought this was too big of a risk.
"The other reason why enthusiasts will be disappointed is the feature set is not what a lot hoped for. In the US consumers wanted DirecTV support and for UK users while the update enables DVB-S it does not have H.264 so BBC HD will not work.
Updates
"Media Center used to get yearly updates but since Vista there have been no new features and Fiji almost got mythical status in the enthusiasts community which this update only has a small set of the hoped for features."
A comment on Dixon's blog, by EZRyder goes further, stating: "So, in short, if your an MCE 2005 user, who's been sitting on the fence waiting for Vista to become 'stable' and to become THE HD media center, this news can be taken as.....wait for Windows 7 as Vista isn't as HD ready as it was implied."
Ian Dixon has discussed this topic further in a blog post in TechRadar's Digital Home blog.
