There’s word from Matt Goyer, one of the Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 program managers, that the new edition will not be available as a standalone retail product, although it will be available to OEMs and system builders as before. There’s a lot to like, features-wise, about XP MCE 2005, but that is certainly disappointing news. A reasonable-priced standalone version might lure more of the home theater scene who are currently toying with MythTV and the like but are more comfortable with Windows than Linux. Instead, we’ve got to pay the hardware premium from OEMs just to get the software we might want.
Matt’s Media Center Weblog [MattGoyer via ThomasHawk]
