I agree that our response to this could have been much better, much quicker. I get the level of frustration our there surrounding this issue and am committed to improving the overall Media Center servicing process.
This particular issue deals with content protection, and any servicing in this area is sensitive. We cannot make unilateral changes in this area and must work through a variety of considerations. The process for releasing non-security updates to Windows Update also comes into play on how quickly we can get a fix released.
I jumped on this thread in March and wanted to identify a solution we could provide in the next non-security release cycle. We had already missed the deadlines for the April and May release cycles, so we targeted June. This still only gave us a couple of weeks to identify a solution before we had to lock down for the testing cycle. Given the timeframe, we identified a safe, although limited, solution. KB950126 released in June, including the limited solution that would provide relief for systems that did not have a set-top box or used analog over digital cable cards.
Throughout the release cycle, there is always a chance that our non-security updates will slip. Part of this is due to our model - doing Cumulative Updates - and part of this is that a higher priority update may bump us out to the next release date. As a general rule, we don't provide specific release date information or information about fixes contained in a Cumulative Update before it releases since a particular fix or the entire update may slip.
We continue to investigate this issue with the goal of providing a broader solution than what was included in KB950126. I'll continue to provide updates, as appropriate, as we progress.
Tim Schreck
Media Center SE
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Tim Schreck
Media Center SE
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.