Computer users running Windows Vista with Windows Media Center will soon be able to download and purchase original content from Showtime, including full episodes, cast information, and various video highlights. Unfortunately, this is only available to people running Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate and not to folks like myself still running Windows Media Center on Windows XP. I've been meaning to upgrade, but I'm an extremely lazy man.
I've already said it about a million times, but I'm always happy to see evidence of this sometimes atavistic industry's realization that "television" no longer refers to just the "TV set." As more and more people turn to the Web to see their favorite programs, partnerships like this make a lot of sense. More ways to watch means more people watching, and that's never a bad thing.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-30-2007 @ 1:31PM
jmalcolm said...
Tip? You call this a tip?
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3-30-2007 @ 4:02PM
Jake said...
It's good to finally hear something good in the "Vista news" section. Up until now, I don't think I've read any.
I wonder if, when more positive things come out, people will retract their negative Vista sentiments. Things like "Cracked Windows" by Shelly Palmer have painted a pretty grim picture of Microsoft's future.
- Jake
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3-30-2007 @ 4:06PM
Jake said...
It's good to finally hear something good in the "Vista news" section. Up until now, I don't think I've read any.
I wonder if, when more positive things come out, people will retract their negative Vista sentiments. Things like "Cracked Windows" by Shelly Palmer have painted a pretty grim picture of Microsoft's future:
http://advancedmediacommittee.typepad.com/emmyadvancedmedia/2007/02/cracked_windows.html
- Jake
Reply
3-30-2007 @ 6:04PM
Bash said...
It's sure nice that this all doesn't require the Trusted Computing Module. REmember the days a couple of years ago where they told us that Windows Vista would require an extra chip on the motherboard just for "trusted computing" which meant nothing more than digital rights management... they even thought about requiring user interaction so that at any given time the license you bought could only be used by you at the time you were actually using/watching what you bought. Imagine having to hit a button every two minutes to be able to watch the sitcom or drama show you bought for 2 to 5 bucks an hours.
The pure insanity of these ideas... I am so glad this didn't happen because to be honest - I have a TV but my PC is always on so I decided to get a monitor with composite-in ports and now I have PiP satellite tv in the top left corner every time I want... which is almost never. I really stopped watching TV the way I did ten years ago. I only watch stuff I got from the Internet and iTunes is getting more and more important in this because you can watch so much more stuff if you just get rid of the commercial breaks and the time you have to wait for the program actually to get on. So in the end I don't sit in front of the TV each night for four hours watching four programs, I now sit in front of my computer, reading stuff like TVS and next to my browser I have last nights episodes of whatever was running and I can fit three shows into two hours meaning I can now watch six shows in four hours instead of just four. And I don't have to indure the commercials anymore.
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