Starting to know what IPTV won't look like

From CEPro.com

HP is pulling out of the Digital Entertainment Center (DEC) business. The company that pioneered the living-room form factor for Media Center Edition (MCE) PCs has decided to drop the line.

The company instead will focus its energy on MediaSmart, the new brand of TVs with digital media adapters built in — not Microsoft Media Center Extenders that link Media Centers with remote TVs, but HP’s own solution for distributing photos, music, video and other content (including Web-based) to the TV.

Just as the first Apple TVs are shipping. This doesn’t mean Microsoft’s out of the IPTV game. Media Center lives on in Vista Home Premium, but not likely in the living room. And isn’t that what Media Center was supposed to be about? Owning the living room.

The HP line was the most prominent of the PC-dressed-as-home-theater-component genre. Of course Microsoft will still be able to claim millions of Media Center PCs have been sold, but it’s hard to know how many are really being used primarily as entertainment devices as the HP line was.

I always wondered if the HP DECs would have done better if they had been marketed by Sony, Samsung, or Panasonic. Apple made the jump from geeky computer company to way cool consumer electronics player with the iPod – a radical departure from the existing MP3 players of the day. HP’s Media Center PCs were not a radical departure, just a nice form factor for the same old Windows thing.