Stage6 Moves Into Stage404
March 5th, 2008 Davis
Over the past week, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about DivX’s decision to close down Stage6. When I first heard the news, I wasn’t sure how to feel about the decision. On one hand, I believe strongly in the free market system and when DivX choose to go public, they took on an obligation to look after their shareholder interests.
By turning to the public DivX was able to raise more than $140 million in cash from investors who believed in the future of the company. Having access to this kind of capital opened a lot of doors for DivX, but it also came with strings attached. While it’s easy to blame DivX’s insiders for pulling the plug, without their initial support, DivX never would have been able to create Stage6 to begin with. I disagree with the final decision to shut the site down, but I can at least understand the economic realities that drove the decision to remove Stage6 from the core business.
On another hand, I was a fan of DivX long before their IPO and a loyal member of the Stage6 community. Without DivX’s community, they never would have succeeded in the first place and to abandon their fans over corporate profits speaks volumes about the priorities behind the decision makers at the helm of the company. While the cold hearted capitalist in me has no moral high ground to stand on, the fan in me can’t help but be heartbroken by the realization that DivX may have lost their soul in the course of going public.
I’ve been using Stage6 from the very beginning and while its always had its fair share of eccentricities, I’ve found that it’s gotten better and better as the site has developed.
Over the last year and a half, I’ve been able to watch “web” videos on my 60″ television, I’ve been able to discover high quality original content that is more relevant to me, then anything on cable and I’ve even been able to connect directly with the artists who I’ve admired. When the history of Stage6 is finally written, it will be easy to be distracted by Stage6’s problems with piracy or the politics at the corporate level, but to see those independent artists lose this platform is the real tragedy behind the Stage6 story.
Seeing DivX shut down Stage6 has been tough, but watching the fallout from has been even more depressing. Initial reports blamed lack of traffic as the reason behind Stage6’s failure 
Silicon Valley Insider’s headline on the story read “YouTube Kills Another Rival.” In Gizmodo’s coverage of the news they write “You may only be vaguely aware of DivX’s Stage 6 video site (which probably explains why it wasn’t successful)”
The problem with this theory is that Stage6’s traffic was actually quite impressive. If anything, Stage6 was a victim of its own popularity. From the get go, DivX tried to rein in the growth of the site, but in the end, high quality downloadable video proved too compelling to stop the explosion in their traffic.
DivX first launched Stage6 in August 2006. Initially, it was intended to be a modest experiment where DivX could showcase their technology. After two months and very little marketing, traffic to the site was already in the “hundreds of thousands user range.” On DivX’s first conference call with investors, Jordan Greenhall told analysts that “in 2007 we have specifically modeled Stage6 to spend no more than $5 million, until and unless we specifically decide to do otherwise.”
Had Stage6 remained underground, DivX would likely have treated the site as a minor marketing expense, but as word about the site leaked out, it created momentum that DivX was powerless to stop.
At the time, $5 million in budgeting seemed appropriate, but even Greenhall couldn’t have anticipated how popular Stage6 would turn out to be and by the end of 2006, Stage6’s traffic was clocking in at 2.4 million unique visitors per month. By February of 07′ Stage6 hit 3 million uniques and 2 months later, traffic was at 4.3 million visitors.
By July Stage6 traffic hit 10 million visitors and it was clear that DivX had tapped into something very powerful. In the first six months of 2007, Stage6 had already burned through the $5 million that they had budgeted and expenses were continuing to climb. In order to better capitalize on their Stage6 asset, DivX announced plans to divest the business and Jordan Greenhall agreed to step down as CEO, under the guise that he would take control of the new Stage6 entity.
By the 3rd quarter of 07′, DivX was spending $4 million a quarter with about 2/3rds of the expense going towards bandwidth. To help control these costs, DivX started an aggressive campaign to remove porn and copyrighted content from their servers, but their efforts were of limited success. When they updated their web player to block certain sites from playing Stage6 content, the pirates were quick to point out that users could get around this restriction by installing older versions of the software. When they started to aggressively remove copyrighted content, people built automated uploading tools that where able to overwhelm the Stage6 staff. Their efforts did help to slow down the growth rate at the site, but by October traffic had still risen to 11.4 million visitors.
With traffic continuing to rise, DivX warned investors that they were budgeting another $6.5 - $10 million in Stage6 expenses for the 4th quarter/second half of 2008. When DivX finally pulled the plug on Stage6, they had likely spent $17 - $20 million on the “experiment” and had over 19 million unique visitors to show for it.
To help put this growth into perspective, 19 million uniques is roughly two thirds the number of US visitors that YouTube was getting when they were acquired by Google for $1.6 billion in stock.
With DivX facing the prospect of having to fund another $20 million in 08′, just to keep Stage6 running, I’m not surprised that the traffic eventually proved too bitter a pill for shareholders to swallow. From the outside, its easy to blame YouTube for Stage6’s demise, but in reality, the site was far more popular than most observers realize.
Given the growth trajectory and the size of the Stage6 community, I had expected that Stage6 would have no difficulty in raising capital to fund the venture, but in December DivX unexpectedly announced Greenhall’s resignation from the board of directors and warned that the Stage6 divestiture would not take place in the time frame given to investors.
At the time, I had a lot of trouble making heads or tales of this announcement and it wasn’t until Michael Arrington leaked the sordid details behind the breakdown of Stage6, that I realized the significance of Greenhall’s departure. According to Arrington, DivX had raised commitments for $27 million in capital at a $90 million valuation. Given that my own internal valuation had pegged the site at $85 million, it would appear to me, that this was a fair valuation for both DivX shareholders, as well as Stage6 investors. Why this deal broke down, isn’t exactly clear and the devil really is in the details, but Arrington pins the blame on massive egos getting in the way of shareholder interests.
“At a meeting in late November the DivX board was asked to approve the spinoff and venture financing. But at the last minute the board decided to cancel the spinoff and retain control of Stage6. It’s not clear why they did this - perhaps they were surprised at the valuation and wanted to keep control of the assets. Or perhaps the revenue from Stage6 was too material for them to let it go over the long run. From what we hear a massive battle of ego’s ultimately killed the deal. But when the decision was made, the key Stage6 founders resigned.”
Arrington speculates as to why DivX’s board turned down the offer, but the reasons he cites don’t really mesh with what the company was trying to do from a financial perspective. It could be that DivX’s board simply didn’t like the terms of the deal or that the financing was never really in place to begin with, but my own conspiracy theory is far more insidious.
I think that the board wanted out of DivX and engineered a coup to take over control of the company.
Greenhall always had grand visions for DivX and clearly wasn’t afraid to take risks. Starting Stage6 was both a brilliant and stupid move on his part. In a very short period of time, he created a valuable asset for the company, but it’s cost structure punished shareholders who didn’t buy into his long term vision. The very reckless nature that was crucial to his success as an entrepreneur, understandably made Wall St. more than a little nervous.
Knowing that Greenhall would never willingly cede control, the board tempted him by offering him control over the Stage6 spinoff. Stage6 was Greenhall’s brainchild to begin with and the bait proved more than he could resist, so in July 2007, he stepped aside as CEO to begin raising funds for the venture. Initially, I don’t think that the board planned on shutting down Stage6, but when financing failed to materialize, they ran out of patience and began to dismantle the team behind the community. When Greenhall found out about their plans, his emotions likely got the better of him and after cornering himself into an ultimatum, he was tricked into giving up the little remaining control that he had left.
While there is no way to know the exact details behind what really happened, amidst the backdrop of the Stage6 revolt, there were two noteworthy public filings that hinted of the trouble brewing in Shangri La.
The first was the revelation that Insight Venture Partners had unloaded their shares on the open market. The second was an amendment adopted by the board that provides significant financial incentives for management to engineer a sale of the company.
At the time, I had trouble reconciling these two filings because if DivX’s board was trying to shop the company, then it wouldn’t have made sense for Insight Ventures to bail out of the stock. Given what we now know about the Stage6 implosion, it doesn’t surprise me that Insight Ventures took the quick exit on this one.
One of the more interesting clauses buried in the change in control agreement is a provision that limits the rights of shareholders to elect new leadership at the board level. If a majority of the incumbent directors are replaced within an 18-month period, it triggers a provision that would cost DivX shareholders dearly. With 3 of the original board members having now resigned, it doesn’t surprise me that the board back dated the agreement prior to Greenhall leaving, so that Hell’s appointment to the board would count against this limit.
It’s easy to overlook this fine print as business as usual, but I think the board implemented these measures to ensure that they would remain in control, in the event that DivX’s long term shareholders objected to their short sighted decisions.
No one enjoys having their dirty laundry aired publicly and it’s easy to get distracted by the drama surrounding the closure of Stage6, but I think it’s important for investors to look past the soap opera and focus on what these decisions tell you about the priorities of DivX management. It’s hard to know the exact details behind Stage6’s failure, but there are a few facts that you can verify.
Whether intentionally or by accident, the DivX board removed Greenhall as CEO. In December DivX saw a mass exodus of their founders. Why they left may be open to interpretation, but the fact that they left together underscores how significant of an event this is. Given its traffic and growth, Stage6 had real value to the right investor, yet DivX’s board wasn’t willing to take the short term earnings hit, in order to maximize the value of the asset. During the time that Stage6 was falling apart, the board adopted an executive compensation plan that encourages management to sell the company even if it means sacrificing DivX’s long term future.
Now it’s entirely possible that I’m reading too much significance into the rift between the board and the Stage6 founders, but the only justification that I can see for the board leaving this kind of money on the table would be if they were trying to dress DivX up for an acquisition. For as much as Stage6 was potentially worth, it was just as much of a liability. Spinning off the site would have allowed DivX to maximize their investment in Stage6, but it would have involved a long legal fight that would have certainly scared off potential suitors.
Figuring out a way to monetize all that traffic would have been the best solution for Divx’s long term strategic positioning, but by closing the site, DivX choose to manipulate two important financial levers instead. Not only do Stage6’s expenses now translate directly into net income for the company, but DivX has decided to use the $20 million it would have cost to keep Stage6 running to boost the price of their stock through a share buyback program.
Normally I would be a fan of these sorts of shareholder friendly initiatives, but as a growth company, I think that DivX owes more to their investors. The company is in the middle of one of the hottest sectors of the new economy and to see them use their cash to buy back stock is a startling admission of how little conviction they have in the long term potential of their business. If DivX’s management really believes the company is undervalued, then why has there only been one insider purchase over the last six months? DivX may cite maximizing shareholder value as the rationale behind these moves, but closing down Stage6 to buyback their stock reeks of desperation. I may be misjudging the board’s motivation, but I can’t help but be suspicious that the real purpose behind the buyback announcement is to boost their stock price, so that their insiders can try to unload the business.
9 times out of 10, I’d argue that having the founders leave a company is a bad sign for investors, but in the case of DivX, I don’t think that this is true. The people who really cared about the future have abandoned ship and Wall St. now controls DivX’s destiny. For investors to react to these events by selling off the stock 25%, makes very little sense.
It’s hard to know what DivX would be worth to the right buyer, but I think that their recent sell off leaves them vulnerable to a low ball offer. If you strip out DivX’s cash, they are currently trading at an enterprise value of less than $200 million, their trailing 12 month P/E is at 18.50 and they are now trading at slightly more than 2 times book. For a company bringing in $80 million a year at 90%+ gross margins, this seem ridiculously undervalued in my opinion.
Whether DivX wasted money on Stage6 or not, their current valuation completely ignores the impact that the Stage6 savings will have on their earnings and certainly doesn’t reflect the potential that DivX’s board may be open to selling to the highest bidder. When you compare DivX’s current valuation to potential suitors, it’s easy to understand why DivX’s trojan horse into the living room, would be worth a premium to the right strategic investor.
I hope that I’m wrong and that DivX’s attempts to maximize shareholder value only represents a temporary set back for their community, but when I connect the dots I see a board that is more interested in engineering short term profitability, then in making the tough decisions necessary to ensure the long term success of the business. If the board was really in DivX for the long haul, it would have been easy for them to overlook DivX’s short term valuation while they tried to find a buyer for Stage6. If their goal was really to sell the company, then it was to their benefit to sacrifice Stage6.
Hopefully, I’m wrong about their plans and DivX will refocus on bringing innovative products to the market. Still, I can’t help but fear that the breakdown of Stage6 really represents the beginning of the end for a brand that I’ve come to love. I’m in no position to pass judgment on DivX for thinking exclusively of their investors, but as a member of their community, it’s painful to lose one of my favorite web destinations over corporate profits.
Posted in DivX, Technology, Media, VOD | 2 Comments »
From The Dawn Of Time To The Discovery Of TiVo
February 25th, 2008 Davis
TiVo Postcard by ~ChibiMagatsu on deviantART
I found this TiVo postcard on Deviant Art and thought that it was interesting. I think that it was originally part of an official marketing campaign, but it’s possible that it may have been created by the TiVo army. My favorite part is where they quote Steve Young as saying that TiVo is the greatest thing since wheat. 
Posted in Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, TiVo | No Comments »
Lawyers Guns & Money: Can DivX’s Safe Harbor Protect Them From Stage6 Pirates?
February 7th, 2008 Davis
DivX took a step closer to being forced to walk the plank after suffering their first legal setback in their copyright dispute with Universal Music Group. In a legal filing published late Tuesday night, Judge Dana Sabraw dismissed DivX’s request to declare Stage6 legal, ahead of their UMG piracy trial.
The dispute originally started in December 2006, when UMG notified DivX that several of their videos were showing up on their Stage6 website. In the original cease and desist letter, UMG didn’t provide DivX with a list of the infringing videos, but still demanded that DivX remove all Universal content. A month later, UMG sent a second letter, only this time identifying specific videos that they had problems with. DivX promptly removed the videos in question and didn’t hear from UMG’s legal department for another 8 months.
After this 8 month period of awkward silence, UMG approached DivX and agreed to license their content, albeit at a very steep cost. In order to atone for their past sins, UMG wanted DivX to pay them $30 million.
Sensing a shakedown, DivX balked at the deal and decided to take their chances in court. They had fully complied with all of the provisions of the DMCA and if UMG wanted to punish them, they’d need to attack the DMCA’s safe harbor provision to do it. After calling their bluff, UMG dragged their heels on filing a lawsuit, but the potential threat for conflict still created a real problem for DivX. With the company trying to spin off their Stage6 asset, these storm clouds of uncertainty cast a long shadow over the legality of their Stage6 operations.
With UMG threatening legal action against the site, DivX was forced to choose between trying to sell the asset at a discount or trying to see if they could ride this storm out. With UMG seemingly content to continue to accrue alleged damages, DivX felt compelled to ask the courts to rule on whether or not Stage6 was protected under the safe harbor provision.
DivX took a huge risk by pushing this issue. If they are right then their wager will certainly pay off. If the courts can establish the legality of their Stage6 website, it would remove a lot of the uncertainty surrounding the business and would allow potential suitors to feel more comfortable about its long term potential. If DivX is wrong though, the consequences could be severe.
Six weeks after DivX filed for declaratory relief, UMG finally made good on their threat and filed a lawsuit against DivX accusing them of piracy. By bringing DivX up on charges, they were able to successfully argue that their trial was a more appropriate venue for this question to be answered. While this does represent a set back for DivX, I doubt that the result was entirely unexpected.
Still, through legal maneuvering, UMG has been able to regain control over home court advantage and they’ve put themselves into a position where they can always settle or walk away if things start to look bad. Even if DivX sticks with the full court press, they may not end up with the declarations that they were hoping for. In the discussion section of the judgment, Sabraw sympathized with DivX, but couldn’t justify running a separate trial now that DivX is facing legal action.
“Defendants argue declaratory judgment is an incomplete remedy since this action does not include all parties to the lawsuit pending in the Central District. Furthermore, since Plaintiff cannot identify all copyrights at issue, Defendants argue the remedy in this Court is limited to adjudicating only the copyrights named.
The Court agrees with Defendants. Athough the fear of uncertain litigation may have initially justified Plaintiff in filing this action, Defendants have since filed a lawsuit in the Central District that eliminates the uncertainty. Moreover, the DCMA [sic] safe harbor analysis Plaintiff seeks here will be more completely and efficiently undertaken in the Central District, where the court will be able to determine Plaintiff’s compliance with respect to particular copyrights that Defendants identify in the course of those proceedings.”
While it may appear that DivX has lost round 1, the dismissal of this case won’t be the end of this dispute by a long shot. With the declaratory issue now out of the way, DivX will need to focus on defending themselves against UMG’s lawsuit. Even though DivX’s initial lawsuit has been dismissed, they’ll still get an opportunity to defend their website. Still, until DivX can reach some kind of resolution, the lawsuit will certainly make it more difficult for them to separate their Stage6 assets from their core business. With rising bandwidth bills, the credit crunch and legal questions surrounding this asset, it may be difficult for them to find a buyer who is willing to get involved in this kind of a dog fight.
Sensing that conditions weren’t right, DivX pulled back on their plans for Stage6 in December and in a press release announcing the resignation of Jordan Greenhall, they also warned that their Stage6 transaction wouldn’t be finished by the end of the year like they had planned. The company promised to update investors in the first quarter of 08′ and with DivX expected to report earnings soon, you can bet that Stage6 will be a hot topic on their next conference call. The plan that DivX management lays out, will be critical in determining how investors interpret their financial results.
Last quarter, investors rewarded DivX by focusing on their non-gaap growth and ignoring the Stage6 and compensation expenses. If DivX still plans on spinning off Stage6, then it’s fair for investors to ignore the rising bandwidth costs and focus on the value of the underlying asset.
If DivX’s legal battles really mean that they need to hold onto Stage6 in order to maximize its value, then investors may be in for a shock when they realize that Stage6 is really a long term investment. Facing the prospect of a drawn out legal battle, they may not take as much comfort in “one time” charges or expenses.
The answer to the Stage6 riddle isn’t an easy one, but after years of profiting from their popularity in the pirate community, it’s ironic to see DivX’s finally starting to feel some heat over the activities of their community. Even beyond the copyright liabilities, there is a significant cost for DivX to foot the bill for pirated Stage6 content and I suspect that DivX isn’t anymore enthusiastic about piracy on Stage6, than UMG is. There’s no way to know how this all will end, but I have a feeling that its going to take longer than people expect, in order to sort it all out.
Posted in SA, DivX, Technology, Media, VOD | No Comments »
The Not So Modern Guide To Life
January 31st, 2008 Davis
Ten years ago, someone gave me a book called The Modern Man’s Guide to Life. It’s basically a how to guide for surviving as a bachelor. It features advice on everything from fixing a leaky faucet to crash landing a plane if the pilot dies. The book was originally published in 1987, so some of the advice is a little out of date, but most of their tips have stood up against the test of time.
One area that could probably use some updating though, is their technology section. When I recently found the book in an old box, I got a real kick out of looking back at the issues that tech enthusiasts struggled with, during the 1980’s. Here are few of my favorites entries.
-Record Storage- The ideal containers for record storage are plastic milk crates - although not all sizes will work, and neither will all shapes (square ones are better than rectangular ones). The crates are stackable, but to preserve the records, set the boxes on their sides. Never store records stacked one atop the other.
-Har, Jim Lad- It’s a pretty lame copy of piracy, maybe, but the smart money plays a disk once and records it at the same time. Cassettes are much hardier than records. The notion that this is an abridgment of copyright is nuts - unless, of course, you start selling your taped copies.
-Antennae- The Best FM antennae are the sort that look like TV antennae and are designed to sit on your rooftop. Even indoor directional antennae, as a second choice, are far better than a simple wire - or nothing at all.
-Format- Go for selection. The choice is VHS or Betta, and if you are at all interested in watching rental videos of current films, you’ll have a much better chance of finding the movie you want on VHS, simply because it’s the overwhelmingly favorite format. New formats are rolling out all the time, but with the enormous catalog of VHS films already on hand the format seems likely to remain the home format of choice. The new 8mm formats are still too new to evaluate.
-Programmability isn’t- So you can program twenty different shows over a seven year period. So what? All VCRs have some programmable recording feature. Don’t get more than you really think you’ll need.
-Psycho Kilobytes- The internal memory of a computer is only important if the software is memory based. If the software is disk-based, storage is more important than memory.
-Info Please- If you system has a communications device called a modem, you’ll be able to subscribe to one of the national information services, such as Compuserve or the Source. You can research obscure topics, flash stock quotations, book airplane seats and exchange electronic mail - but if you really want to show off, make sure you acquaint yourself with the instructions in private, or you’ll look like a bozo.
-Universal Film and Processing- If you’re ever in doubt about which brand of film to buy or where to get it processed, go for Kodak. They’ve maintained a consistently high standard of quality and their labs are everywhere.
Posted in Technology, Media | 1 Comment »
The Pros and Cons Of Media Center Vista
January 31st, 2008 Davis
Over the past few months, I’ve finally started to get a feel for Media Center Vista and while I haven’t tried out every feature in the program, I have played around with it long enough to have some initial thoughts. Before I tried the software, I had low expectations, but after actually using the program, I’ve been really impressed with what the Media Center team has put together.
Media Center Vista allows you to perform some pretty advanced tasks without having to be a computer geek in order to figure out how to use it. I initially had some reservations about the user interface, but it only took about a week, before I found it growing on me. There are still improvements that Microsoft needs to make, but they’ve made a giant leap forward, compared to the original XP version.
Pros
-Media Center Vista is wicked fast at finding new programs. In the XP version, the software was painfully slow at trying to search for shows. As soon as I would start typing in the name of a show, XP would freak out from trying to sort through so much information. In Vista, the program still starts searching immediately, but the indexing has been turbocharged. Instead of having to wait for the menu, the results will appear as fast as you can type. This faster indexing shows up in a number of areas. When you are browsing, you can hit page down and scroll through programs as fast as you can read them. If you want to rearrange the priority of your recordings, you can make changes and move onto other areas of the program without having to wait forever while the system checks for conflicts.
-The interface looks fantastic. Microsoft has done a good job of creating a clean and intuitive DVR experience. The program is easy to navigate and has lots of extra features. On the surface the design appears relatively simple, but you can tell that Microsoft has paid a lot of attention to the little details. Whether it’s being able to double click on the picture in picture window, in order to bring up the full screen or being able to see the DVD art for upcoming movies, there are a lot of subtle features that make for a more enjoyable media experience.
-Vista comes with 30 second skip enabled. TiVo fans know that you can hack your remote to add this feature, but the big studios were able to scare TiVo into disabling it for the masses. In the past, I’ve never really used the 30 second skip feature because it meant giving up the skip to the end button on my remote. After spending some time with it on Media Center, I’ve been really surprised at how much I’m enjoying it. Hitting a button six times is a lot easier than trying to guess when the program is about to start again.
-There is minimal interference between you and your recordings. One of my biggest frustrations with the generic DVR was that it required too many unnecessary steps, before I could interact with my content. It felt like I had to hit ten buttons before I could schedule a movie, delete a recording or even watch a show. With Vista Media Center, it’s an entirely different story. The entire experience is built around the content that you are interacting with. You can’t do everything from all levels of the software, but each step is intuitively linked to the task that you are focused on. If you are watching a TV show, then by right clicking you can delete the program or burn it to DVD. If you are playing music it’s one click to pause, skip, repeat, shuffle . . . .
-You can watch TV while surfing the web. Media Center is really designed for the living room, but I’m primarily using it in a desktop setting. I didn’t think that I’d watch a lot of TV at my desk, but I’ve found it to be the perfect compliment to streaming Netflix and YouTube. This isn’t ideal for shows with intense action and complex story lines, but its perfect for tuning into the news when you see a story break online or for listening to late night talk shows, while you’re multitasking on the web. This feature won’t benefit you, if you plan on using Media Center on your TV, but it’s a good reason to add on a TV tuner, the next time you upgrade your PC.
-You can use the XBox360 as an extender. I’ve read a lot about the Xbox extenders, but I had never actually seen one in action. Connecting my Xbox to Media Center took an extra registration step, but it was well worth the time to get it set up. When I first heard about Microsoft’s extender strategy, I was skeptical that it would stream videos without problems or program lock ups. While I didn’t test the connection using WiFi, my experience using the Xbox was almost identical to having the PC directly connected to the TV. No lag, no stuttering, just instant access to my content on my big screen tv.
-You can watch TV while using the menus. TiVo uses picture in picture technology on their Comcast download, but you won’t find it on their stand alone DVRs. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed this until I started using Vista as a DVR. Whether it’s a live show or a recording, Vista will minimize whatever program that’s on, when you want to dig deeper into the menu settings. This isn’t good if you’ve accidentally stumbled onto a football game and are desperately trying to avoid the score, but it is nice for when you’re not exactly sure what you want to watch.
-It will help you find programs that are on right now. Vista Media Center allows you to search for programs in a number of ways, but its their support for upcoming television, that impressed me the most. When it comes to searching for things like TV series, kid shows, etc., it allows you to browse alphabetically or by date. They’ve also built a separate section for movies and for sports where they’ve packed in some extra bonus content. In the TV and movies section, they offer plugins for various movie download services and in the sports section Vista will let you check the box scores or add fantasy players to track.
-You can skip automatically skip commercials. DVRs make it easy to skip commercials, but Vista Media Center takes things one step further by supporting plugins, that can edit out those pesky little ads entirely. It’s not easy to set up and it’s not something that is enabled by default, but it’s still a pretty sweet feature to add.
-You can placeshift your TV. The Slingbox is great if you have a cable DVR or a TiVo, but with Media Center you can download a free plugin that will let you watch your content wherever you can connect to the net. I haven’t actually used the program yet, but it’s still a great feature to have access to.
-You can burn DVDs. Normally, I’m pretty good about watching all of the shows that I record, but when it comes to boxing, I just don’t have time to see every fighter. It’s my favorite sport, but since I record every fight (even the ones on the Spanish channels), there isn’t enough time/hard drive space, to get caught up. Since I’ll never really know which fighters will end up making it big, I’ve decided to use my Media Center to archive all of the fights. By saving them to DVD, I should be able to go back and watch the fights that mattered.
-It supports external storage. Media Center gives you a lot of control over how you want to set up your storage. Since I’m using it as a secondary DVR, I’ve set it up to record a maximum of 100GB on my internal drive. If I need more, I can add an external drive or increase my internal hard drive allocation.
Cons
-You shouldn’t have to reboot your TV. One of the things that I love about my TiVo is that it just works. You don’t have to be a tech geek to figure it out, you plug it into your TV and it records everything. In the entire time that I’ve been a TiVo customer, I can think of very few occasions where TiVo failed to record my programing. When it comes to Media Center, it’s important to remember that it’s a PC first and a DVR second. Over the last few months, I’ve found the program to be mostly reliable, but it hasn’t been smooth sailing either. Whether it’s been dealing with poor DRM design, troubleshooting a bug that refused to let me download the guide data or having my computer crash while recording television, there have been several times where I’ve missed recordings, because of PC related problems. While I can’t blame Microsoft for all of my problems, it’s still frustrating to miss a show because of technical difficulties.
-Internet video support is weak. Media Center includes support for services like Vongo and Showtime on Demand, but it involves registering and downloading a separate program before you can get it working. As a Netflix subscriber, I was looking forward to being able to use Watch Now inside of Media Center, but Microsoft has left it up to the fans to build support for this. Microsoft includes some MSN internet video content, but they make you watch pre-roll ads before knowing whether or not it’s something that you are interested in. The Xbox may unofficially support DivX, but you can’t access it inside of media center. If you prefer to use a media extender instead, it will support your XviD files, but it’s set up to block your DivX content.
-It won’t record radio. XM may have just settled a lawsuit over their radio DVR, but recording radio shouldn’t be any different than television content. Media Center will let you listen to OTA radio, but it doesn’t let you record any of the programs.
-Fast forward is a little too powerful. It may be, that I’m just used to TiVo, but Vista’s fast forward speeds are hard to adjust to. They’ve got slow, almost fast and then it jumps to hyper speed. I can’t tell whether or not they are using a five second skip back, but when I hit play, I’m usually way past the start of the program. If you stick to the 30 second skip it’s not a problem, but it’d be nice if there was some kind of a way to adjust the timing on this.
-You can’t skip to the middle of a program. One of the things that I like about downloaded video is being able to immediately jump to the middle or the end of a program. Since this is a key feature in Window’s media player, I was surprised to see this missing from Media Center. There is also no way to jump 15 minutes ahead. If you happen to fall asleep during the middle of a program, you’re stuck with fast forwarding in order to get back to where you were at.
-You can’t rate your television. As television continues to involve, it’s becoming increasingly personal. Media Center does a good job of recording TV, but it doesn’t do a very good job of getting to know you. You can sort movies by the highest rated, but its using someone else’s criteria. Because you can’t tell Media Center what you do and don’t like, there are no suggested recordings or personalization.
-It doesn’t support auto-recording of wishlists. I’m a big basketball fan, but I’m really only interested in seeing the Laker games. Media Center will let me search for the next time that they are playing, but it won’t automatically record the game. It would be nice to be able to use media center to record programs that are customized to my interests.
Al pointed out in the comments that you can actually uses wishlists, you just need to set it up from the add recording field. Thanks for the help Al. This one definitely should go in the pro category.
-Vista’s DRM doesn’t play nice with HD. I’m still fuming over this one. I knew that recording HDTV on Vista would be a hassle, so I stuck with standard tuners when I customized my computer. After upgrading to an HD monitor, Vista disabled my Netflix Watch Now and put Media Center into lock down. If Apple’s DRM wasn’t just as bad, I would be thinking differently after this experience.
-It takes forever to burn a DVD. I was really jazzed up over being able to archive shows onto DVD, but the sluggishness of the DVD burning capabilities has me rethinking this game plan. It took me 2 and a half hours to burn a one hour program to DVD. It’d be one thing if I was using lousy hardware, but it takes less then 4 minutes for me to burn a 2 hour DivX film. It’s nice to be able to save your TV, but it should never take more time to burn the disc, than it does to watch it.
-Good for early adopters, complicated for everyone else. Vista Media Center offers a lot of unique features, but it takes too much tweaking to set these up. Placeshifting and auto commercial skipping are available, but it’s up the consumer to find and install these programs. Even if you know what you are doing, the setup can still be complicated. Instead of making consumers seek out these programs, Microsoft should be including them as part of the package. It wouldn’t be popular with the media companies, but it’d win the company a lot more fans.
-The recording quality is terrible. It’s probably not fair to compare a cablecard connected TiVo with an analog cable media center set up, but the TiVO SD recordings on my 60″ screen, look way better than the Media Center recordings on my 22″ monitor. This probably has less to do with Media Center and more to do with the tuners that I’m using, but it still takes away from the user experience. Unless you want to spend the big bucks on a cablecard media center, you may end up having to deal with poor resolutions.
-There’s no turning back once you delete - As careful as I am, sometimes my DVR instincts go on auto-pilot and I’ll accidentally delete a show before watching it. With TiVo I can recover that program, but in Media Center it is gone forever. The file isn’t even in the Recycle bin. Media Center will always ask you to confirm before deleting, but this also creates one more button to push when you are done with the shows that you have watched.
So there you have it, the good, the bad and Media Center Vista. There are some rough spots around the edges, but it really is a fantastic program. I’m hoping that we’ll see better support for HDTV and for online video as the program continues to evolve.
Posted in TV, Media, DivX, Slingbox, DRM, Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, Microsoft, TiVo | 5 Comments »
Netflix In A Coma I Know
January 7th, 2008 Davis
For the past few months, KK and SalGal have been reviewing their Netflix movies on YouTube and their videos are hilarious. This is my favorite new TV show and its not even on television. Normally, I wouldn’t be a fan of midlife chick flick movie reviews, but their dark sense of humor is right down my alley. In this video KK interviews SalGal after she slips into a coma. You can see more of their videos at their YouTube page or you can visit them at their Midlife Gals blog.
Posted in TV, VOD, Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, Netflix | 1 Comment »