Group Promotes Media Center PCs
To Be Used In Custom-Installed Systems
By Joseph Palenchar -- TWICE, 9/3/2008
CEDIA News Denver — Six companies have banded together to create a trade group that will promote awareness and use of Media Center PCs as the hub of custom-installed home-control and multiroom-A/V systems.
The Media Center Integrator Alliance (MCIA), launching here at the CEDIA Expo, will promote the Media Center PC platform to the custom channel for commercial as well as residential installations. It will also develop programs for training and certifying individuals in Media Center installations and will develop best-practices documents, which will encourage installers to embrace the platform without having to “learn by fire,” said Kevin Collins, MCIA chairman/president and Microsoft’s custom-installation channel director.
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MCIA chairman/president Kevin Collins |
In raising awareness, the group wants to “make installers comfortable that the technology is sound and robust,” Collins said. Another message will be that the open Media Center platform delivers a more affordable option with good margins compared to the installation of proprietary systems, he said.
At last year’s CEDIA Expo, Collins noted, “very few integrators had heard that Media Center could be an option in a custom solution, and fewer than that thought of even doing installations [with a Media Center PC.]” This year, the newly formed group will raise awareness by exhibiting within California Audio Technologies booth 469 and launching a Web site, www.mediacenterintegrator.org, on Sept. 3.
The group will also recruit more manufacturer members, sign up installer members and invite additional companies to join Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Hewlett-Packard, Niveus, Exceptional Innovations and Crestron on the board of directors. Niveus and Exceptional Innovations are among more than a dozen companies offering Media Center-based A/V servers or home-control systems. Crestron offers lighting-control systems that can be controlled from a Media Center PC, and AMD’s ATI subsidiary makes digital CableCARDs for Media Center servers.
After the Expo, MCIA will continue to recruit members as well as create working groups for marketing, public relations, developing training and certification programs, and creating best-practices documents, Collins said. For training, MCIA wants to work closely with CEDIA, and for certification, MCIA will require closed-book tests to be taken at a test facility, Collins said.
The group’s vice chairman is Brian Paper, cofounder and operations VP of Niveus. The group’s management company is VTM of Portland, Ore.
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Media Receive has been installing these systems in homes across the UK for over a year and a half and there has been no end of joy for our clients and installation team.
The challenge has always been stability of the system and feasibility for the client. Unlike AV and IT companies, Media Receive comes from a media background making our products and services simple and friendlier to our customers.
We have not received any real level of support from Microsoft or CEDIA which was disappointing, but our skilled team of ex-forces technicians, developers, project managers and system integrators worked magic for our clients making us UK leaders in this field.
I sure Media Receive and the 'Media Center Integrator Alliance' will ensure the media center lifestyle becomes more stable, affordable and more importantly mainstream in the UK by late 2009.
Sion Buckler - 2008-4-9 11:28:00 EDT -
Dear Editor:
Before MS pushes Media Center any further, it will be very welcome that this company takes care of the many bugs that MC currently has...
One very important issue is that the player that MC uses is not Windows Media Player and if you play a video from your HD (in both players) and minimize a frozen scene for side by side comparison in both players, you will find that Media Player has a much better resolution than Media Center…
Why? I really don’t know, yesterday we made the Media Center team in MS aware of this situation and they replied that adjusting the resolution for the external display would do it. We did so by increasing for the external display in MC to 1080 P (resolution of the external display used) but this did not help at all.
We need a MC that is Customer Oriented and not as INVASIVE…MC in order to be successful needs to open its gates for customization of menus and features (what to control and how) and the option to delete or hide whatever the customer DOESN’T want in the menus should also exist…
My customers want to control the servers inside their homes and this includes audio, video and photo albums (entertainment) and other than that, lighting, security (including in and outside cameras) and temperature…If we could customize MC for doing this and hiding all of the other features, we could sell thousands of MC based systems.
Best regards,
AZ
Owner-General Manager
Home Theater and Automation
Flathead Lake, Montana
azuaro@icehouse.net
AZ - 2008-3-9 17:08:00 EDT
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