Windows open to family life
Do not talk to Bill Gates about the delights of Apple's iPod portable music player or the magic of the TiVo digital television recorder.
These are two of the first fruits of the digital entertainment revolution: devices that perform a single function so well that they have attracted a small but passionate army of devoted users. Any mention of the sleek "sexiness" of these new icons of consumer electronics, however, is likely to draw a sour response from Mr Gates.
"My living room today has a remote control for the DVD player, the satellite, the audio, the TV. To me, there's nothing very sexy about that," scoffs the Microsoft chairman. "It's completely confusing."
Then, for good measure, he delivers another swift kick to Apple's early success in digital music. "There's an interesting lesson from the PC market," he says. "They didn't give people choice in hardware [there either]" - a reference to Apple's continuing refusal to open up its iPod technology to other manufacturers.
Mr Gates is now ready for the latest stage of his own assault on the world's living rooms. At an event in Los Angeles yesterday he unveiled the third generation of the Media Center PC that Microsoft hopes will spearhead its push into home entertainment.
His criticisms of Apple and TiVo point to where Microsoft believes its own best chances lie. This is an all-purpose machine for storing, managing and accessing music, video and photos (only one remote control needed here). Also, Microsoft has banked on attracting a large number of hardware manufacturers to bring competition in the form of new features and lower prices.
"We run a very open environment - anyone can come in and play," says Mr Gates.
The Media Center is meant to act as an entertainment hub, storing and playing different forms of media. The networks needed to transmit all these digital goodies around the home are still in their infancy, but among the devices on display yesterday were "extenders" that use short-range WiFi networks to link PCs and TVs in different rooms. An extender for the Xbox, Microsoft's games console, is due soon.
"They have articulated a very clear vision of how the digital home will work," says Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Jupiter. Having reached its third iteration in two years, the Media Center PC is now at "the point where it's mature, stable and ready to fulfil the vision".
To judge by the modest sales of the first two generations of the Media Center machines - not to mention the continuing resistance to thinking of the PC as a home-entertainment device - this is not a message that most consumers are ready for yet.
"I have not yet bought into the PC as the centre of everything," says Mitchell Kertzman, a venture capitalist who used to run Liberate, an interactive TV software company. "I want more reliability and ease of use in my entertainment than I have in my PC."
Microsoft has been working hard to shake off the PC's reputation for instability - although Mr Gates bridles at any suggestion that the new machines, which in some ways resemble consumer electronics equipment rather than the familiar desktop computer (see box), are trying to disguise their PC roots. "We're very proud that it's called the PC," he says. "We talk about it as the 'PC plus' era."
If the past is anything to go by, Microsoft will keep pushing out new and improved versions of the machine until it finally arrives at something that appeals to a broad consumer market, says David Smith, an analyst at Gartner. "They are a very patient company," he says.
To be sure, the integration of digital home electronics could come about in other ways that do not require a PC - or Microsoft's Windows - at the centre of everything. An industry-wide body known as the Digital Home Working Group, for instance, is trying to set the standards that would let digital equipment from different manufacturers work together seamlessly on a home network.
However, such standards-setting efforts, which involve companies with competing objectives, tend to move slowly, says Mr Smith. Microsoft has the advantage of being able to move at its own pace, as long as it can draw hardware makers along with it.
So far, things are moving in the right direction, even if the digital entertainment market is still largely unformed. While only four companies built machines for the first version of the Media Center, last year's update attracted 40 manufacturers and Microsoft claims "hundreds" for the latest machine.
This smacks of Microsoft's classic modus operandi:create a widely adopted platform that other companies will want to use as the basis for their own businesses. But will the traditional powers of the consumer electronics industry accept the role that Microsoft has created for them in this new digital living room - a place with the Windows operating system at its heart?
Mr Gates is quick to point out that companies such as Sony, Samsung and Matsushita have been among Microsoft's best partners and are making their own versions of the Media Center - even as the consumer electronics arms of companies such as Sony compete with rival products of their own.
He also argues that consumer electronics companies "really don't do much UI" - or user interface software, which guides people through the more complex functions of digital entertainment devices. Given the importance of the user interface in determining the "experience" of using a digital device, these companies are unlikely to agree that this is something that should lie outside their control.
Even if more of the pieces have fallen into place in this latest version of Microsoft's living-room vision, some big hurdles still lie ahead.
One is persuading movie studios to make more of their products available in a way that shows off the new technology at its best. Microsoft has spent heavily to develop the digital rights management software needed to do this - money that Mr Gates says it will never be able to recover from sales of the software. Yet so far, Hollywood is still dragging its feet when it comes to releasing more movies in digital form.
"We'd like to see a broader range of movie titles, and see them come out earlier," says Mr Gates.
A bigger problem is the complexity that consumers face when they try to use the new technology. "The challenge will be educating the market about all the functionality" in the machines, says Mr Gartenberg. "And with added functionality comes complexity."
Setting up a home network remains the biggest technical obstacle for most people - one reason why most early customers have used them as standalone machines attached to a single screen, usually in the study rather than the living room.
Until the Media Center comes into its own as the hub of new wireless home entertainment networks, it may remain little more than a high-end PC with enhanced media capabilities, banished from the living room and with no direct link to the TV.
But with the latest generation of the machine, Mr Gates has served notice that Microsoft's ambitions in digital entertainment continue to gather momentum.
微软看上你的客厅
不要告诉比尔?盖茨(Bill Gates)苹果(Apple)iPod便携式音乐播放器带来的乐趣，也不要对他述说TiVo数字录像机的魅力。
这是数字娱乐革命最初取得的两项成果。这些设备将单一功能发挥得淋漓尽致，从而吸引了一批数量不多但热情忠实的用户。但向盖茨先生提起这些消费电子产品新贵的时髦“性感”时，他的反应很可能是酸溜溜的。
“现在，我客厅里的DVD播放机、卫星电视、音响和电视机都有一个遥控器。对我来说，这毫无吸引力可言，”这位微软(Microsoft)董事长轻蔑地表示，“这把人完全搞懵了。”
此外，他立即又对苹果在数字音乐上初获成功出言相讥。“个人计算机市场给我们上了生动的一课，”他说，“他们（也）没有在硬件上给予用户选择的机会。”这里，他指的是苹果一直拒绝向其他制造商开放其iPod技术。
现在，盖茨先生已经准备好向全世界的客厅发起自己的最新攻势。在洛杉矶举行的活动上，他为第三代媒体中心电脑(Media Center PC)揭幕，微软希望它能率先进军家庭娱乐市场。
由盖茨先生对苹果、TiVo的缺陷的批评可见，微软相信他们最好的机会恰恰蕴藏在此。这是一种多功能的机器，可以存储、管理和读取音乐、影像和照片（这里只需一个遥控器）。而且，微软依靠吸引大批硬件制造商，带来新功能和低价格方面的竞争。
“我们的环境非常开放，任何人都可以参与竞争，”盖茨先生说。
媒体中心想要扮演的是一个可以存储并播放不同格式媒体的娱乐中心的角色。虽然在家中传输所有这些数字信号所必需的网络尚处于起步阶段，但在昨天展出的设备中，有一种采用短程WiFi网络连接不同房间里的计算机和电视的“信号延伸器”(extenders)。微软游戏控制器Xbox的信号延伸器也即将问世。
“他们已清晰地描绘出一幅数字家庭的蓝图，”调查公司Jupiter的分析师迈克尔＃加滕贝格(Michael Gartenberg)说。媒体中心电脑两年内推出了第三代产品，现在正处于“实现这个宏伟蓝图的成熟、稳定和有准备的阶段”。
从第一、第二代媒体中心机器销量平平的情况来看（人们一直都不愿将个人计算机看作是一种家庭娱乐设备，这一点更不必说了），大多数消费者还没准备接受这一观点。
“我买计算机，从来没有想过要把它作为所有娱乐活动的中心，”曾经营过交互式电视软件公司Liberate的风险资本家米切尔＃克茨曼(Mitchell Kertzman)说，“我希望我的娱乐设备使用起来比计算机更可靠、更方便。
微软一直努力想要摆脱个人计算机不稳定的恶名，尽管盖茨先生对任何有关该新机器试图掩盖其个人计算机根源的说法都嗤之以鼻。有些人认为，新机器在某些方面更像是消费电子设备，而不是大家所熟悉的台式电脑，。“我们十分自豪的是，它的名字叫个人计算机（PC），”他说，“我们把这称为‘个人计算机升级’（PC plus）时代。”
市场研究公司Gartner的分析师大卫＃史密斯(David Smith)说，如果历史可资借鉴的话，微软将继续推出改进后的新型机器，直到最终能够吸引一个广阔的消费者市场为止。“这是一个很有耐心的公司，”他说。
当然，数字家庭电子产品的整合可以通过不需要以个人计算机或微软视窗(Windows)为中心的其它方式进行。例如，行业组织――数字家庭工作组(Digital Home Working Group)正在尝试制定标准，从而使来自不同制造商的数字设备能在一个家庭网络上天衣无缝地一起工作。
然而，史密斯先生说，这种制定标准的步伐往往比较缓慢，因为所涉及的公司的目标是相互竞争的。只要能吸引硬件制造商与其共同发展，微软就有了以自己的速度制定标准的优势。
到目前为止，尽管数字娱乐市场仍然极不成熟，但一切均朝着正确的方向发展。尽管为第一代媒体中心制造机器的公司只有4家，但去年升级后的机器吸引了40家制造商，而且微软称第三代机器的制造商将达“几百个”。
这具有典型的微软风范，即建立一个广泛使用的平台，其它公司都想要把它作为自己业务的基础。但是，消费电子工业的传统力量是否会接受微软在这个以视窗操作系统为核心的新型数字客厅中为他们设计的角色？
盖茨先生很快指出，索尼(Sony)、三星(Samsung)和松下(Matsushita)一直是微软最好的合作伙伴，并在制造他们自己的媒体中心版本，尽管与此同时，索尼等公司的消费电子产品部门正以自己的同类产品与之竞争。
他还表示，消费电子公司“真的不太做用户界面”，用户界面软件能带领人们了解数字娱乐设备更为复杂的功能。鉴于用户界面在决定“体验”数字设备方面的重要性，这些公司一般会认为这些事情应由他们控制。
尽管在这个微软最新版的客厅蓝图中，越来越多的部分已趋于明朗，但前面依然困难重重。
困难之一就是要说服电影工作室更多地以最大限度展示新技术的方式制作影片。为此，微软在开发数字版权管理软件上投资巨大，而且盖茨先生说这笔钱永远无法从软件销售中收回。但到目前为止，当遇到增加数字电影的发行数量时，好莱坞(Hollywood)仍然显得有些迟疑。
“我们希望看到电影选题范围更广，并期待它们尽早面世，”盖茨先生说。
更大的一个问题是在消费者尝试使用新技术时，他们所面临的错综复杂的状况。“这个难题将是如何让市场了解机器的所有功能，”加滕贝格先生说，“而且，随着功能的增多，复杂性也增加了。”
如何建立一个家庭网络仍然是大多数人所遇到的最大技术难题，这也是为什么大多数早期用户把它们作为与单一屏幕相连的独立机器的一个原因，而且通常是放在书房内，而不是客厅里。
在成功成为新的无线家庭娱乐网络的中心之前，媒体中心可能仍然只是一台媒体性能增强的高端个人计算机，在客厅内芳踪难觅，也不与电视机直接相连。
但随着新一代媒体中心的推出，盖茨先生宣称，微软将继续在数字娱乐领域大展拳脚。
