The Death of the Extender for Windows Media Center

By on May 19, 2009 in Hardware, Windows Media Center

As you may have seen on Gizmodo this week, both Linksys and HP have confirmed that they’ve dropped their Extender for Windows Media Center products, and other than a prototype device from Toshiba announced at CES this year, it looks like the category is pretty much dead in the water at this point.

Regular readers may remember that my crystal ball pretty much predicted this when I wandered around the show floors at Las Vegas this year. Networked TVs and DLNA support from the CE guys as well as Microsoft in Windows 7 ultimately will provide most of the functionality you need to enjoy music, videos and photos on your TV from your PC or home server without the need for an additional (and historically underpowered) extender device.

For the likes of Linksys and especially HP, Extenders were a niche product within a niche category and I guess the volume just wasn’t there (or likely to develop) to make money. The good news is that from HP’s statement, there’s a lot more faith in the MediaSmart Server to breakthrough as one of HP’s core products.

The question for Microsoft is can they encourage TV manufacturers to adopt the fabulous Windows Media Center interface via an embedded solution, or will be left to languish in the manufacturer’s pretty dodgy user experience? The Xbox 360 isn’t the answer for my home, unfortunately – the fact is, the hardware is starting to look pretty dated in these days of glossy piano black everything, and I just can’t be doing with the excessive fan noise in the lounge when it’s switched on.

Last night, I went up to the den to catch up on some TV using Xbox 360 as an Extender, running the new Windows 7 Media Center RC – the Media Center experience is fantastic and gets better with every revision. But the Xbox 360 hardware just takes the edge off.

I passionately believe there is a future for Windows Media Center on the “third screen” – I just hope that Microsoft aren’t banking on the current Xbox 360 hardware as their last hope to deliver it.

For more perspectives, check out GeekTonic and Ian Dixon.


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About Terry Walsh

Terry Walsh is the founding editor and owner of We Got Served. Since February 2007, the site has provided detailed coverage and analysis of the emerging home server category, and has subsequently grown into a trusted outlet for digital home news and reviews.
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  • http://intensedebate.com/people/urmaster urmaster

    Just a thought with E3 in a month and no announcements there could be another revised xbox 360 SKU although very unlikely. All hardware revisions to date have been leaked very early so again unlikely, but they are constantly improving the hardware and on my falcon based box I don’t notice the noise if no disc is spinning.

    My biggest problem with Media Centre has been the DMO Filters (codecs) and the library management. The 360 only has support for MPEG and WMV using the current media centre software on vista or XP (because it uses the local DMO filters) meaning my library of videos which is 80% Xvid is pretty much useless. My music library is again useless because of the shoddy library management in WMP11, this leaves just photos. Navigation on the xbox 360 is very sluggish for what reasons I don’t know (being that the 360 is still more powerful than the average PC).

    As you’ve guessed from the above Media centre has been very much well meh for me. I could have easily seen myself using it had It been properly implemented with WHS from the outset. Alas MS is slow to react yet again.

  • Jeff

    Hmm, if WHS Vail integrates Media Center and supports tuners as i hope it will, there have to be extenders or softsled.
    of what use is a tuner-farm if you can't stream to PCs and TVs??
    i think you could built a cheap pc that would support softsled with 1080 for 200-300 dollars these days(or in 2010).

    But we don't even know if Vail will support tuners
    if it doesn't, it will be a big bummer.
    i hope we'll know soon (june 5th???)

  • Andrew

    I'm really dissapointed by this news, I had been planning on buying two or three for my house, but now it seems a bit silly to invest in an unsuported technology.

    I'm running the Win 7 RC as well, and I really enjoy the MCE experianc on my Xbox, but for the same noise reasons I had avoided getting any more as an alternative to the stand-alone MCEs.

    The biggest problem with DLNA, is that it doesn't let you stream live HD TV across the network, but who knows maybe we will hear something new about that soon…

  • rbg08

    Had extenders supported more video formats, they would have had much better success. I find myself firing up mine less and less lately. With HTPC's becoming cheaper to build ($300-400 will get you a good rig capable of blu-ray playback) and consuming less energy/making less noise, I believe extenders are becoming obsolete anyways.

  • Steve

    Media Center is dead also, no services, no new features, MS is focused on X-box in the home.

  • MitchSchaft

    Long live SageTV!

  • Rick

    I just picked up a Linksys DMA2200 a month ago. Its been a great machine for the cash and is completely silent. I picked it up for $120. The other best option was a used xbox 360 and network adapter which would have pushed me over $200 for sure. After reading that Linksys was discontinuing the media extender, I checked to see if I could get another one for even cheaper. Nope. Newegg and they had increased the price! They want $140 for it now.

  • Soundtweaker

    This is good new for MS as fas as Xbox sales go.
    One of the big problems with standalone extenders is,
    the average consumer doesnt even know what the hell the thing even does.

  • Simon

    Anyone with a slightly older, out of warranty Xbox should check these out.. http://www.quietpc.com/products/quiet-xbox

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  • john reed

    I think the next year to year and a half should prove interesting. The next version of WHS should contain the media streaming functionality we are currently seeing in Windows 7 RC. If Microsoft were to then integrate the Zune front end into the Xbox, I believe we would achieve the Extender experience that we all crave. On the noise front, like mentioned above, the only time my Xbox is noticeable is when its got a disk in it.

  • http://www.shift-f7.co.uk Chuz

    It's more of a hassle to set up and maintain, but I've eschewed using my 360s as MC Extenders and am now buying Acer Aspire Revo's – £250 for the model I have one of so far, running Vista Home Premium. Just added folders to watch for every category (currently on my main VHP quad core, but getting a WHS Scaleo 2105 soon) and it works flawlessly, with none of the 'Unsupported format' codes I used to get when watching some DivX movies via 360. Plus, I get to browse the web and listen to Spotify over it, something the 360 couldn't do. Also, dead silent and minimal power consumption – in the region of 20-30 watts!

    Still keeping my 360s – useful as backups if one red rings and we use them for gaming sessions, so my friends just need to bring games and HDDs from their 360s, rather than lugging the whole shebang, but with Vista Home Premium machines so cheap, I really do think the days of the dedicated Media Centre Extender are over.

  • Tom

    I hear you on HTPC's, and I agree that the current implementation of Extenders leaves a lot to desire (especially the ability to play native VOB files), but I still think there is a place for some sort of extender architecture. I don't want to buy and separately maintain HTPC's for every TV. I like the WHS idea – let it support Media Center, and perhaps Microsoft build a cheap black box to front-end various screen devices.