Last night i was pretty fired up on the concept of the Windows MCE Extender, but after reading a few reviews that I found, I am not at all. The media extender boxes allow you to grab all of the content (in theory) from your home media PC running Windows Media Center Edition 2005. However, what Microsoft does not tell you right up front is that the extender boxes cannot run any DivX encoded movies or videos. DivX for those of you who do not know is probably the biggest movie encoding/compression format out there. You need a little piece of software called a Codec to play the videos once they are DivX encoded. The codec is free, but there is no way of installing it on any of the MCE extender boxes including the Xbox (you can get some $40 software to use your Xbox as an extender box). This is just plain silly, and it is something that I can see MS and the vendors like Linksys that make extender boxes rectify in the second round. Being able to gain access to all of your television that you have recorded is sweet and to your music too, but not for $250…I don’t think. Maybe it is worth $100 to do something like that, but not $250 guys.

I think that Windows MCE is a really great and promising product, but Microsoft needs to keep improving it. I think that the vast majority of people using MCE 2005 at this point are Tivo converts or soon-to-be Tivo converts, who are looking for the next best thing. Most of us can see the potential that MCE has, but I would really like to hear Microsoft say that they are working on integrating a slew of improvements that will make the entire platform better. So, if you work on the MCE team at Microsoft, here are a few things I would like to see you guys clear up for MCE 2005 with an update:

• More Tivo like functionality

• Better program and guide searching/filtering - I want to be able to find shows that I like much more easily. See the Tivo keyword searching.
• Better organization and layout of recorded television shows. I like the color schemes and clean look of MCE, but the display and organization of the shows leaves something to be desired.

Ok, I have to get back to actually doing some work, but this is a good start. Let me know if you need me to come up to Washington and help you guys out with this stuff.