RE: Re: RE: Windows XP Media Center Edition Review

[roaming@xxxxxxx]

Quoting steve.cooper@xxxxxxx:
> >> Now if they added this functionality to the xbox, it would
make a lot
> more
> >> sense....
> 
> What's the difference between doing it on a PC or an xbox.

An xbox is a small (well smaller than most PC's anyway), fairly quiet
device, 
designed to be connected to a TV all the time, is pretty much instant-on,
and 
is a fixed platform.

The last bit is important - this means developers know _exactly_ what their
target platform is, and thus can aim to optimise their code for that
platform 
alone.
In the same way that you get great, stable games on the xbox, ps2 etc, you
could easily have it running stable software to record programs whilst you
continue playing games at the same time.

PC developers (eg Microsoft in the instance of MCE) do not have a single,
stable platform to develop for so they cannot optimise their code in the
same 
way.  
Also, a PC is designed to be a general purpose machine - a console or STB
is 
not.  It performs a limited range of functions:
DVD playback
CD's
MP3
Games playing
That's about it.
It doesn't need to support hundreds of different graphics cards,
motherboards, 
hard drives etc etc, and it doesn't need to run your accounts program, WP,
web 
browser etc etc all at the same time.....

If you think about it, the TiVo does what it does very well on a titchy
processor with bugger all memory.  Any modern processor in a fixed
platform 
environment could do the same with bugger all impact on you playing games
at 
the same time......

T.


http://www.automatedhome.co.uk
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