You may have the technology but are you using it? Maybe you’ve heard the “Better Together” story but you have not had a chance to really fully experience it. That is exactly what we wanted to show you at Cedia 2009. Cedia is the largest event of the year for custom installers to come and learn about new technology emerging in their industry. Think of Cedia as the CES for custom installers.

Windows Home Server teamed up with Windows Media Center, Windows 7 and Xbox to demonstrate how Microsoft technologies come together in the home. The booth was designed to be a replica of your home, your home office and your office away from home. This was done in an effort to emulate real working home scenarios. The picture below illustrates the booths layout:



The Office:



This networking nerve center demonstrated how users can access their content in various ways in their office, away from home or away from their living room. Attendees were shown such features as centralized storage, access to content on the go, Home Group, copying TV content from one Media Center to another and remote streaming. This is also where the Windows Home Server HP MediaSmart powered the entire booth, which included 9 extended Xbox’s & 6 tuners connected to the N9 Niveus high-end Media Center PC with the new AEP 2.0 technology (which allows for an increase from 5 extenders to 10 & 4 tuners to 8), with photos, videos and music content. The Niveus N9 was located in the theater room.

The Bedroom:



Your personal get away spot in your home should enable you access to all your content at whim. The bedroom revealed a portable Windows 7 Media Center on a Sony VAIO laptop and an Xbox 360 extender connected to a large display. Giving you the ability to watch your content, listen to a little music and even record TV without leaving the comfort of your own bed; maybe you just wanted to obtain the score of your favorite team. The Windows 7 Media Center laptop demonstrated the new Netflix tile in Windows Media Center.

Family Room:



With only an Xbox 360 connected to your large screen TV, you have gaming and entertainment from one device. The family room is the central place to come together and watch TV, stream movies, view photos and even play some music. With the Xbox 360, you can play a few video games while streaming music from the home server. With the recent Xbox 360 update, Netflix enables you to stream movies and TV shows from the internet!

Theater Room:



The theater room is probably the most impressive part of the home, aside from the Windows Home Server being in the office serving all of the music, videos and photos content. Enjoy the luxury of your surround sound while playing Blu-ray movies, enjoying television, home movies or blaring music until your ears hurt. Be amazed as 8 different tuners record content at the same time and store it on the HP MediaSmart Server powered by Windows Home Server. Travel to any of the 9 different Xbox 360’s in extender mode and watch the recently recorded TV or change the channel to a more enjoyable show.

Cedia Announcements:

Let’s talk about the announcements and some of the technology making this all possible.

Windows Home Server:

Power Pack 3 was a big part of the show. This enables the use of libraries in Windows 7, automatic archive of TV content (which is very important with 8 tuners capturing content constantly) and single file restore in Windows 7. The Zune and Windows Phone compression feature allowed TV content to be played on your mobile devices. It was very exciting to see attendee’s reactions to these new features!

S1Digital announced a new Digital Entertainment Platform, which provides centralized archiving, storage and distribution of HD movies, live and recorded HD television, videos, music, photos and more. This is all based on the Windows Home Server platform.

Windows Media Center:

Probably one of the biggest announcements at the show was the ability to add your own Digital Cable Tuners to your PC. Before, you needed to purchase a computer with a special BIOS to be able to record digital TV.

CETON showed off their new single card that has 4 tuners with-in the S1 Media Center running the theater room and an extender. This single card could record 4 channels at once. They also have a 6 channel version here.

Here are a few other show announcements from Windows Media Center. To read more please visit here.

• Switched Digital Video (SDV) support added to Windows Media Center.
• End Customers Can Now Add Digital Cable Tuners With CableCARD to Their PCs
• Digital Cable customers can now enjoy more TV portability in Windows Media Center
• New Firmware for ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuners
• Windows Media Center Features in Windows 7 highlighted

More...

Posted By: z3r010
25 Sep 2009