Put your money where the media centre is

news analysis Consumers may be slowly warming to the benefits of Windows Media Center Edition (MCE) PCs, but most businesses are still unaware that this steadily growing market promises new potential revenue streams with a relatively small investment.

That was the message from presenters at Microsoft's recent ReMix07 conference in Melbourne, which focused on how the company's various media handling technologies can streamline content management or generate new income streams.

MCE was singled out for its ability to marry a generally used computing platform with the universal acceptance of the television as a display mechanism -- using the principle called the "10-foot interface" to provide an interactive, easily navigable front end to all sorts of content.

"The TV is still the most important screen in the house," said Jason Suess, technical evangelist, for developer and platform evangelism with Microsoft in the US. "Content producers have a large investment in this content they've produced, and they're trying to get it in front of the viewers where they're living. The problem is that they're taking very high production value content, and distributing it to computer screens."

High costs and lack of compelling content have hindered sales of MCE equipped systems for several years. IDC reports reveal that just 5.85 million MCEs, worth US$6 billion, shipped worldwide in 2006 -- 46.3 percent of those in the US alone. IDC expects worldwide shipments will reach 27.5 million units worth US$29.4 billion by 2010.

A major driver is the fact that MCE functionality is built into higher-end versions of Windows Vista -- meaning it will be on most new computers shipped in coming years.

That's a lot of computers connected to TVs -- and a lot of opportunity for savvy content producers, according to Suess. "People tend to spend large amounts of time in front of the TV," he said, "and they're not as scatterbrained as they tend to be on the desktop. Particularly for advertisers, this makes it a more important screen because they have more opportunity to make an impression."

Windows MCE is recognised for providing access to stored and downloaded content, Suess said, as well as enabling Web browsing on the TV.

Content is king
What most companies don't realise, he added, is that it's also a full-fledged development platform capable of pairing live information feeds with broadcast content to gives remote-control wielding MCE junkies more content choices than ever.

User interface conventions must be changed to ensure visibility in the 10-foot user interface, but Suess said the pairing of online content with live or stored video offers considerable new possibilities -- commercial and otherwise -- for content producers.

New media designer Massive's chief technical officer, James McParlane, for example, discussed the MCE version of the company's V8 Supercars channel, which combines actual telemetry information for particular cars with video from those cars -- or uses the MCE box to tune in live race coverage when the races are on TV.

"We wanted a 'lean back' experience," he said, "with that immediate gratification that's halfway between a video game and a DVD menu. If the user isn't sure whether the application is part of a game or a DVD, we've succeeded."

Massive designers quickly learned what works and doesn't work when developing for the big-screen MCE environment. Menus need to be designed as clearly and simply as possible, while certain colours must be avoided: Red, for example, tends to bleed on some older TVs while many sets will struggle to distinguish between dark blue and black.

Newer LCD and plasma TVs "make this go away", McParlane said, "but then you have to deal with burn-in [on plasma TVs]. You don't want to have a white square sitting in the corner for four hours a time while someone's watching the race, then be burned onto the screen when they change to something else."

The site incorporates Microsoft .NET, Adobe Flash and Windows Media Player technologies, all of which interact with the Windows MCE system. To generate additional revenue above and beyond subscriptions, the site also includes links to an e-commerce front end offering a range of V8 Supercars merchandise.

Even more commerce-driven was a Windows MCE version of BigPond Movies, which Massive built last year to let MCE users to purchase their content through the same TV interface as they view it. Suess also demonstrated an MCE version of the TurboNick content site, which takes over the MCE interface with a Nickelodeon branded site whose controls remain true to the MCE environment.

"This all gives you the opportunity to create a fully branded, immersive experience," Suess said. "With [rival Apple's] iTunes, you take the content, hand it to Apple and Apple takes care of the marketing -- but you lose any touch with the consumer. With MCE, Microsoft is not the middleman; you get to create a different relationship there."

The promise of such real-time relationships, maintained through a media with a long-term attention span, is a key reason advertisers should be considering the platform, Suess said, noting that support for new technologies like Microsoft's Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) -- as well as XAML (eXtensible Application Markup Languge) applications and MCML (Media Center Markup Language) -- provide several methods for content producers to make their mark on the MCE ecosystem.

"If you've already spent the large amount of money to create these assets and the infrastructure to serve it up on the Internet," he said, "building an interface to let MCE users serve that up is really just an incremental cost."