The Digital Transition - Media Center continued
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This magic update is called Media Center TV Pack 2008. If you Google around you can find the files, and also instructions for updating Windows. It does require some other, additional updates from Microsoft, which are available to the public.
The reason you can’t find the TV Pack 2008 update is because it was intended for OEM manufactures only, and isn’t officially supported. The down side is that it supports a new recording format called WTV. Current ad removers and converters are just getting support in beta for this new format, so it might be a little while before we see the utilities and tools that we had for previous formats.
Windows 7 is on the way, and the public beta will probably be out by the time you read this, so what will Media Center be like then? It will have the TV Pack built in, so every copy will have WTV support as well as ATSC support.
The good news for HTPCs is that the signal will now be digital, meaning that the computer will no longer have to convert the analog signal to digital to display it on the monitor. This means that you won’t run into the CPU being overworked from encoding it to digital. This might not be a big deal with dual or quad core, but this would give you the ability to comfortably run TV signals with lesser CPU; the Intel Atom would be a great CPU to run on.
We are coming up on a huge change in TV viewing. The content isn’t changing, but the way it is sent to your home from the station and the way your TV “reads” the signal will be different. If you are a subscriber to cable TV or satellite TV, you have nothing to worry about. Your signals won’t change at all; this change only affects the signals over the air, for those who use an antenna to watch TV.
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