Origami (UMPC) Will Act as Media Center Extenders

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.cepro.com/news/editorial/7819.html' target='_blank'>http://www.cepro.com/news/editorial/7819.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"The especially good news for Media Center Edition aficionados is that Microsoft will enable Origami to serve as a Media Center Extender (MCX). Microsoft is coming out with a software version of MCX expressly for Origami (See Update above), meaning these little touchscreens can serve as a slave to any MCE in the house, so users can play recorded content, exploit Online Spotlight, use the electronic programming guide -- anything they can do with other MCXs (and most things they can do with an MCE). If you have automation software for MCE, you can use the Origami touchscreen to control the house. I often lament the lack of remote interfaces for MCE--who wants to turn on the TV just to to access a music playlist? It's sad that there are only two MCX form factors right now -- the Xbox 360 and the Linksys WMCE54AG. Why are there no in-wall MCXs for example?"</i><br /><br />This is an obvious move, but I'm still so incredibly glad to see it because I was fearful it would take Microsoft several years to figure out that it's very necessary - I'm glad they hired some smart people over there. ;-) With an UMPC acting as a MCX, you now have a small portable device you can take anywhere in the house and watch your TV shows on. That's a killer scenario, and one that will drive UMPC sales as the sale of MCE computers continue to climb.

[rlobrecht]

This is really good news. I hope that they don't end up limiting the software to UMPCs only, as I can see uses for other small (but not UMPC) computers as well (like the laptop that sits on the kitchen counter.

[Jason Dunn]

Yes, I believe we'll see this client software released for XP or Vista machines eventually. It's been asked for since the first MCE machines came on the market...

[Felix Torres]

Correct.
The software itself has been in development for years and is pretty mature. It is also device independent; if it works with UMPCs it'll work with any PC. The code name I saw was soft-sled, with xsled being the XBOX version of the client.

The problem is performance:
- on the XBOX's 733MHz PIII performance is adequate for audio and photos but SD video is marginal
- on the 360 with its multicore &amp; vector-processing-heavy CPU, performance is a breeze

Regular PCs and Laptops will fall somewhere in between.

The UMPC CPUs are going to be closer to the former than the latter so, of course, some of the features won't realistically work. And other that might work won't make much sense--like streaming audio or photos from the MCE, when just mounting the remote storage and playing the files using the local UMPC media player is more reasonable.

So, what we're likely to see isn't going to be a full MCX implementation.

But...
The Big thing is they are thinking about integrating the MCE and UMPC (and PocketPCs, one hopes) along with regular laptops and desktops into a seamless system.

This is a *necessary* development in home networking and its good to see it coming. These things all need to work together a lot better if we're to justify the expense.