AfterDawn: News

Microsoft adds new Windows Media Extenders

Those engineers out of Redmond over at Microsoft have announced the release of a new range of extenders which will increase the amount of video formats that Windows Vista can broadcast throughout your home.

With the expectation of companies such as Cisco, D-Link and Niveus to unleash set-top boxes next month that are capable of accepting a stream of video from a Windows Media Center PC running on at home network. Users of the Vista Home Premium or Ultimate versions will be able to stream the previously unsupported DivX and XviD file formats to any television through a wired or wireless network.



These new extenders will be capable of delivering DRM encoded files over an 802.11n network for display in protected high-definition.

Microsoft hopes this move will revitalize customer interest in the Windows Media Extender services they provide as currently the only one making any big waves is the extender built into the Xbox 360 which is estimated to have sold some 10 million units.

Microsoft has plans to broaden its range of vendors which will produce extenders for the Media Center to potentially cover other devices such as DVD players.

Source:
PC World

Written by: Dave Horvath @ 6 Sep 2007 9:48

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• 5 comments

• Dapsone

  Does this mean the X360 might get an update to allow streaming of DIVX and XVID ?????????

  6.9.2007 12:34 #1

• steigs

  Thats a real good question and 1 i'd like to know the answer to also!!!
  
  Would be ace if they did,thay are doing maintaince on live shortly(10th sep i think).
  
  Heres hoping thats part of it.

  6.9.2007 15:52 #2

• pdxcrash

  u gotta be kidding --- stream over youre xbox... come on .. who the heck has time to watch a vid -- to busy gamming ! ... why buy an xbox to stream media ... Play Media ! lol ...
  
  --slingbox !

  7.9.2007 15:03 #3

• borhan9

  if new formats are goin to be supported you would most be certain that divx and xvid would be standard formats that are going to be supported.

  10.9.2007 18:56 #4

• pdxcrash

  yes i would agree -- one would assume --
  
  On the other Hand -- this is M$ft were talking about ..
  so i wouldn't be supprised if they only use their codecs.
  wmv-wma .. they are releasing or already have a new version of movie codec. and be honest .. i have a crunched a few dvd's using wmv and actually it was considerably smaller the using divx .. maybee i had settings reduced or something ,,dont recall but was rather impressed with not only quality but size as well.
  
  just my opnion .... but nothing shocks me anymore .. just pisses me off.
  such as my new wii ... does not contain a dvd player ....

  10.9.2007 20:46 #5