JeffTucker – MSFT:

al74:

There are more implied promises like this by the way you just need to search. Jeff actualy made some in this thread. Let's wait and see what's going to happen with these promises. I'm willing to predict that no material update will be out before Windows 7 (and that Windows 7 won't be out before 2010), and even if there will be one, it won't be available to existing users.

First, I have made no promises (implied or otherwise), and I ask that you please give me specific instances so that I may respond directly to the accusation.

Second, you talk about a release date for the next version of Windows and also talk of some mysterious update before then as if you heard that information from someone within Microsoft.  This is exactly the kind of misinformation that leads to rumors and speculation, much more so than any "implied promises" by Microsoft employees.

We all *** and moan because MS won't tell us anything about future updates, then when they do, we accuse them of promising stuff that hasn't made it into the release!

I more so think that we like to contradict ourselves...

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realise why Jeff and MS did not give us any details about what was being worked on.  And even though they didn't, we're now accusing them of promising features?

Ha ha ha.  Irony can be funny.

But I am pissed about the OEM only status of this release.  I'd like to know if the leaked update will screw my PC or not like one of the regulars around here tried to imply.

oon2ooo:

Ultimately I am not trying to suggest there is no results for all of the work Microsoft has done. I am only suggesting that this has come (in practically every market) short of expectations by a long shot. And I think I can speak for a lot of people here in suggesting what we are looking for is an acknowledgment of this.

...

If Microsoft was to simply say they are sorry for under delivering, highlight the steps they are taking to support some of the features everyone is looking for, and start providing some actual timelines and expectations it would go a long way. I mean since when is it ridiculous to expect that companies tell you what they are doing and when they will be delivering it?

So you are asking for two things... an apology and our product roadmap. 

I believe you can read my previous posts and see that I acknowledged that while this release will benefit many users globally... I understand how some users are unhappy.  I am sorry that you (and the other users in your shoes) are unhappy with this release.  I truly am.  Know that I was in a conference room fighting for YOU up until the release plan was finalized.  The outcome of that was my belief that while I wish we could have made everyone happy... this was the right decision for our team, for our OEMs, and for many of our customers.  The sad reality is that we are trying to make a very large number of people happy with each release, and it is nearly impossible to do all the work that everyone wants (take a look at that community feature list if you don't believe me).  We have to prioritize and make tough decisions sometimes.

Regarding our release schedule, I wish we could give you details, but we can't.  We are trying to be more transparent about overall direction and high level goals.  That will continue to improve over time.

oon2ooo:

Having Microsoft's presence here in the forums only blowing smoke up our behinds and trying to pander to what they succeeded in does not help us to feel like our loyalty is regarded in good esteem.

If that is how you feel about my contribution (and that of my colleagues), then I'm clearly not doing my job very well.  We work tirelessly (on Sundays I might add) to improve our relationship with this community.  I'll only ask that you give us some credit for the progress we have made improving communication since July 3rd, and also that you be patient for more changes to come.  We haven't even completed the site upgrade and migration, and that is the foundation that we need in place to build upon.

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Jeff Tucker
Microsoft | Media Center
------------------------------------------------
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

JeffTucker – MSFT:

our focus in this release was mainly on the large user-base that has no native support for their primary broadcast standard (DVB-T, DVB-S, ISDB-T, etc.).

May I correct you that DVB-T was already natively supported in Vista RTM.
It only got improved with TV Pack (Teletext, better channel sorting, Audio Channel Selection, subtitles etc.)

And if your focus was to give "the large user-base" native support for DVB-S I have to tell you that you are missing this goal, because your user base is not officially getting the update! - Only new buyers of OEM systems are.
What you should know, also, is that "the large user-base" in Europe has mostly Standard-PC's or self-made Media PC's with standard DVB-S tuner cards from Digital Everyhwhere, Hauppauge or Technotrend... OEM's do not sell many Media Center PC's here in Europe. Acer and Fujitsu Siemens, for instance have completely stopped advertising their Media Center PC's in Austria and have weak sales in Germany.

The rest of the user base in Europe are those who upgraded their PC's and laptops with cheap DVB-T sticks or expensive external DVB-S Tuners e.g. the FireDTV S/CI...

You are - i assure you - excluding 90% of your user base with this decision.

Of course what I also expect, is that more OEM's will now possibly offer more Media Center based Media PC's again taking advantage of their head start versus the normal users, who will have to wait until Windows 7 to get some of the features.

As a digital home consultant I have a hard time explaining to my clients that MCE ist better, when they find out that it doesn't support HDTV at all... (They usually turn to Sagetv or Reelbox as a result...)

For premium Media Center PC's - even OEM's such as Sony or Fujitsu Siemens offer such systems - with BluRay drives, it is often hard to explain to my clients why they can't play their BluRay's from Media Center - they have to get up and go get the mouse...

I assure you - your user base in Europe are definately not customers of signed Media-Center-PC-OEM's. Maybe 5-10% - at most!

 

Ok, I have a quick question about the TV Pack update. I've seen in some threads that you can use a QAM tuner, NTSC tuner, and ATSC tuner all at the same time now with the update but I was curious if you could use a regular NTSC tuner in conjunction with the CableCARD tuners. I would love to be able to specify anything on 1-72 records on a regular NTSC tuner so that it doesn't tie up my CableCARD tuners.

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Jeff, I hope I did not come across that I do not appreciate the fact that you are here trying. I think in previous posts I tried to convey that. I appreciate your candid response and your presence. I think there is simply an impasse created by the fact that you are unable to truly do anything to make this better in terms of transparency or future discussion.

It is very difficult being a long-time supporter of a product to see it fall short. And it is extremely frustrating to not be able to make informed decisions about my purchases because no information is provided. Based on this outcome I am stuck between a rock and a hard place and will most likely have to give up VMC which is something I really don't want to do.

JeffTucker – MSFT:

If that is how you feel about my contribution (and that of my colleagues), then I'm clearly not doing my job very well.  We work tirelessly (on Sundays I might add) to improve our relationship with this community.  I'll only ask that you give us some credit for the progress we have made improving communication since July 3rd, and also that you be patient for more changes to come.  We haven't even completed the site upgrade and migration, and that is the foundation that we need in place to build upon.

This will be my last post on this subject as complaining will not do any good at the moment. MSFT purchased this website knowing it is about to piss off the entire community (as none of the current users who already own a pc are eligible to receive this update). We all (well.. most of us) had big hopes thinking that this acquisition will result in better support. We now realized that we have been fooled. You are the chosen rep of MSFT here. Don't expect a lot of loyalty, trust or support after this fiasco. "We hear you..." or "we are working on a solution..." will not work this time. At least not for me.

 

Jeff -

No one here (at least in their right mind) blaims you or Ben for the frustration they feel.

I think at the end of the day it is simply that no matter how hard you fight, the people in that top pay bracket will stick to their strategic plan that was designed by someone who doesn't have a firm grasp on anything other than OEM demands.

I hope things get better, I really do... but I do understand how people around here feel, especially when my wife says "why do I have to use the STB to watch HD again??" "Why do we have to shut down MC to watch a BluRay movie??"

How do I answer those questions? They are legitimate... and she does have a point.

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My VMC setup:
(2) Xbox360s
Dell XPS410 (2.6Ghz C2D, 2GB Ram,Nvidia 8600GT, Blu-ray internal, HD-DVD external (X360 drive), (2) Vboxx DTA150s (OTA HD), 1 HVR-1150 (OTA HD) and Dish Network

Jeff,

What the people here are angry about (I'm one of them) but you have to say, it's justified. When you release a beta test to the community, MS made the mistake (yes, a mistake) by having the public test the beta product and "sell it" to the community that it's a product that they will eventually have as an upgrade. What MS should have done was to tell the community upfront that it's an OEM release or even release it to the OEM and have them select the community of testers.  The problem I see here was the parameters and expectations were presented incorrectly and that's why there's this terrible backlash. People were under the impression (in this case, guessed/expected) different. I don't remember that this release was geared primary for the international space...

From the questionnaire that was geared towards multimedia management and only to find out that it mostly fixes tuner issues -- tuner issues that do not really exist and there were workaround already in the public. Clear-QAM, got it already. Multiple tuners, got it already. So in the end, what do we get? We got something that we already have and MS says, well, too bad, you can't have the MS version.

As a PM myself, I have seen when projects go wrong and what the decisions I made impacted the public perception. Fiji is a major black-eye and at this point, there's nothing that can satisfy the bloodthirst of this community that has supported MS through think and thin and only to have the betrayal of an OEM release.

Instead of responding back to all the comments but what you should do is to print out all the comments and during one of your programming meetings with the decision makers, share the comments of TGB and tell them, "team, we screwed up" and tell them that "we need to fix this" and ask them, "how do we fix this?" No spin-doctoring, no passing the buck, no excuses, no Mojave experiment.

Don't take this personally. The messenger is always sacrificed. I commend you that you took time to release this information and putting your name on the line. The community has spoken, it's time for you to carry back the message back to the eHome team.

thanks

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Vista Ultimate x64|MSI Custom Built Low Profile|AMD 5800+|4GB DDR2 800Mhz|4x500GB Sammy SATA2 RAID-5|HPG 1600x2|HDHomeRun|HDMI|SPDIF
- - - - - - - - - -
Comments posted here are not the opinion of my employer.

dravor:

And who will deny you that? 
Dell?  Dell is not going to care how you aquired it.  For all they know, they sent you a replacement Install Disc which included it.

S1 has already made aware all S1 owners that if they have "lost" their install Disc, they will be sent a TV Pack included replacement.

If you took a moment to look at my sig you'd see I have an HP. I have written to HP support and contacted a friend who works at HP (enterprise sales) and neither have any clue what TVP even is, so pardon me if I'm not too convinced they will know any better come CEDIA.

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HP M9300T HTPC
Vista Home Premium 64-bit
Q9300 2.5ghz Quad-core 1333mhz FSB
6gb DDR2 PC2-6400 RAM
ViXS PureTV-U 48B0 Tuner Card
Hauppauge HVR-2250 Tuner Card
MSI 4670 w/1gb DDR3 VRAM
D-Link DIR-825 Wireless N Router
Linksys DMA2200 Extender

al74:

This will be my last post on this subject as complaining will not do any good at the moment.  MSFT purchased this website knowing it is about to piss off the entire community (as none of the current users who already own a pc are eligible to receive this update). We all (well.. most of us) had big hopes thinking that this acquisition will result in better support. We now realized that we have been fooled.

Actually, complaining is a completely appropriate reaction in your situation, and this is definitely an appropriate place to do so.  I mean... at least you know we are listening.  I will agree, however, than going on and on about decisions already made serves little purpose.  What we need to do is move forward and continue building on the relationship we have started to build between eHome and the TGB community.  I am sorry that you feel "fooled", but your emotions are not reflective of the reality of the situation.  You were not fooled, and there was no connection between the Mirosoft acquisition of TGB and the release of the TV Pack.  I know this for a fact, because I personally led the charge to acquire TGB... not management and not marketing.  If the two event had been connected, you would think that we would have been smart enough to buy the site AFTER the TV Pack announcement, because we could have avoided dealing with all the initial negativity and spun the message as if we were acquiring the site as a response to your pain...  but we didn't do that.  We did the right thing by acquiring this site to improve the relationship with the community... for better or worse.  This was a long term investment... not a knee-jerk reaction to some upcoming release. 

I'm willing to listen to the complaints and deal with all the (justified) criticism, because we NEED to hear what you have to say.  Will your complaints immediately change things... certainly not the TV Pack release that RTM'd less than two weeks after we acquired the site.  However, our participation here CAN change things over time.  I understand that many of you are done with Media Center and you'll be moving on to competing products.  I am sorry to hear that, and I hope you choose to reevaulate Media Center again in the future.  We'll be here waiting for you.  For the rest of those that are willing to stick around and build a better future with us... the only thing I can promise is improved communication with the eHome team and an improved TGB site that will help make your feedback more effective and actionable so that we can influence REAL change moving forward.

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Jeff Tucker
Microsoft | Media Center
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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

"We do want the Windows Media Center community to know that Microsoft will continue to improve upon the Windows Media Center experience for our customers worldwide, by adding content partnerships and enhanced features.  We will share these developments as they become available."

Jeff, I copied the above directly from the MS press release about TVP. I guess "as they become available" has now become a euphemism for "if and when we damn well feel like it."

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HP M9300T HTPC
Vista Home Premium 64-bit
Q9300 2.5ghz Quad-core 1333mhz FSB
6gb DDR2 PC2-6400 RAM
ViXS PureTV-U 48B0 Tuner Card
Hauppauge HVR-2250 Tuner Card
MSI 4670 w/1gb DDR3 VRAM
D-Link DIR-825 Wireless N Router
Linksys DMA2200 Extender

GSoD:

Instead of responding back to all the comments but what you should do is to print out all the comments and during one of your programming meetings with the decision makers, share the comments of TGB and tell them, "team, we screwed up" and tell them that "we need to fix this" and ask them, "how do we fix this?" No spin-doctoring, no passing the buck, no excuses, no Mojave experiment.

Don't take this personally. The messenger is always sacrificed. I commend you that you took time to release this information and putting your name on the line. The community has spoken, it's time for you to carry back the message back to the eHome team.

I get where you are coming from.  However, this reaction does not come as a surprise, and the eHome team is aware of the perception.  We know this is a "black-eye", and we know that we need to regain the trust of the community.  Give us SOME credit for understanding the environment we work within.  So I'm actually not here to spin, pass the buck, or provide excuses.  I am here to provide as much of the brutal, honest truth that I can.  The decisions have been made, and the announcement is out there.  Now we need to learn from it and move forward.

I'll also add that while many of you feel "betrayed" that this is an OEM-only release, and there have been comments that we are witholding this from the enthusiast community... you don't see us squashing conversations involving versions of the TV Pack that are clearly pirated, nor have we pulled the links to the downloads.  I understand that this does not change the fact that this release is only supported through OEM channels, but it should at the very least let you know that we aren't here to censor the site or stop our enthusiast community from playing at their own risk.

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Jeff Tucker
Microsoft | Media Center
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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

JeffTucker – MSFT:

...the TV Pack that are clearly pirated...

Jeff, please stop saying this. It is insulting to be accused of criminality for doing nothing more than availing ourselves of something that should have been provided to us in the first place. And this is a free product that was not stolen, but provided to the community. How that happened may be up for debate, but continuing to call us pirates while trying to convince us how you care about the MC community is disingenuous, at best. I know that's not the feeling you want to convey.

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HP M9300T HTPC
Vista Home Premium 64-bit
Q9300 2.5ghz Quad-core 1333mhz FSB
6gb DDR2 PC2-6400 RAM
ViXS PureTV-U 48B0 Tuner Card
Hauppauge HVR-2250 Tuner Card
MSI 4670 w/1gb DDR3 VRAM
D-Link DIR-825 Wireless N Router
Linksys DMA2200 Extender

CycleWriter:

JeffTucker – MSFT:

...the TV Pack that are clearly pirated...

Jeff, please stop saying this. It is insulting to be accused of criminality for doing nothing more than availing ourselves of something that should have been provided to us in the first place. And this is a free product that was not stolen, but provided to the community. How that happened may be up for debate, but continuing to call us pirates while trying to convince us how you care about the MC community is disingenuous, at best. I know that's not the feeling you want to convey.

I'm sorry of you take offense to that (and completely miss the larger point I was trying to make).  However, the fact is that anyone with the TV Pack on an existing system has acquired this unsupported, leaked version of the software from a download site where it was illegally posted by someone that broke their NDA.  As was stated by other users in a similar thread, you can argue semantics and pick a word other than "pirated" if you take offense to it.  However, the underlying meaning is is the same.

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Jeff Tucker
Microsoft | Media Center
------------------------------------------------
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Jeff,

I have to agree with CycleWriter here. You are saying anyone that downloaded this pack is engaged in software piracy, yet you left the link on this site and even winked at people who asked about it. I for one assumed (incorreectly) that as it was being linke to on a microsoft owned site whith the moderators full knowledge that this was going to be released to the wider community at some time and microsoft did not have any issue with people having access to it. Now I am accused of software piracy( I own every copy of software ) That is very insulting.