All past Media Centre-based PCs have included a TV tuner and promoted TiVo-like recording as a key feature. Making the TV-recording feature optional would allow PC makers to sell machines equipped with Media Centre for less than $800 (£444) -- a price that could generate more demand.
The new version of Media Centre will coincide with a marketing campaign called "Windows XP Reloaded," which promotes numerous products that are debuting this year as reasons to buy a Windows XP computer. These are expected to include Windows Media Player 10 and two peripherals tied to Media Centre. One is the Portable Media Centre, a handheld that plays music, pictures and recorded TV, downloaded from a PC. The other is a set-top box, known as Media Centre Extender, that allows consumers to watch videos and TV shows in the bedroom while the Media Centre PC is in the den.
Longhorn's long journey
Beyond sprucing up Windows XP with more advanced multimedia features, Microsoft has to complete a road map for Longhorn and decide what to do further with XP before the next major operating system update. Microsoft has already scaled back its Longhorn ambitions. In April, the company said it would trim Longhorn around the edges, hoping to allow the operating system to ship by 2006.
Other companies, such as Apple, have tried to update their operating systems with smaller, more frequent revisions. Apple has been averaging roughly one new release of the Mac OS X per year since the first version debuted in 2000. The latest edition, Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, shipped in October 2003, while "Tiger," with its improved search capabilities, is due out in the first half of next year.
With Longhorn, Microsoft has been planning three major changes to the way Windows works: a new file system known as WinFS, a new graphics and presentation engine known as Avalon, and a Web services and communication architecture dubbed Indigo.
Such a major overhaul is difficult for Microsoft, with its need to ensure compatibility with thousands of existing software programs, not to mention myriad peripherals and other devices. In the past, the company has had to scale back or scrap some ambitious efforts, such as the ill-fated Cairo release of Windows in the mid-90s.
