Tales of Windows Media Center Program Management

So as you’ve probably seen by now – Media Center has sold over 20 million copies . This is quite cool. When I started on the team about three years ago we’d only sold about 750 thousand. It has been quite an opportunity to grow with the team. That...

There is so much to blog about that it is just killing me. I've been trying to think of new blog posts that don't relate to the project that I'm working on - at least until it is announced. Until then I suppose I have to think of some interesting topics...

A few months ago I posted about folks seeing glitching while watching live TV if they were using AMD Dual Core Processors. There was a driver update that came out that I pointed to. A co-worker of mine mailed and said there was a newer driver. ...

So a few things here. As always there are just my personal opinions. Nobody writes this stuff for me – or edits, etc. Just me here on my couch. Also before I start I think my next post will go into how we get features into the product and a bit about...

I admit it - I'm a lame blogger. Seriously. I wonder if anyone will even read this. How long has it been? Almost six months. All I can say is sorry. I'm still in eHome. I'm still alive. No I wasn't taken out by an exploding battery. I'm still working...

Check out the interview and my voice taking up space on the internet. :) Does anyone like how they sound when recorded?

Honestly one of the biggest frustrations in blogging is that I can't talk about everything that I'm doing. The retail project is one of the big ones that was on the down low. Now it is out and I can admit that I own the retail project for Media Center...

I've heard requests for chats on Media Center. Not sure if you everyone knew about our chats or not but we do hold chats pretty regularly (I attend when I can). People from the product group and MVPs participate to help you with any issues you have. ...

A quick update. I've made a small update ot the title. I've switched form the Project Management team to a Program Manager. What does that mean within Microsoft? Well simply enough a Project Manager at Microsoft looks across the entire project. A Project...

As promised the story of how something like a time bomb slips through. Two words: Dual Projects Let’s set some basics on software development and define a few terms. I’m figuring most of you know this already but a baseline never hurt anyone...

Story to come later... If you have access to the Vista Beta site the fix is up there. If you don't have access you either got it from MSDN or "other" means. MSDN will have the fix a bit later. I'll explain how this happened hopefully today. I...

I got this link: http://www.longhornblogs.com/robert/archive/2006/01/02/15590.aspx sent to me about Media Center not working in Community Tech Preview #3 for Vista. Well this is lame and not fun but we are fixing it was we speak. An update will be...

If you have MSN Messenger add: encarta@conversagent.com You can ask all sorts of questions and it will answer you - almost like a live search in an encyclopedia. This is a good example of who you can be very creative at Microsoft and how you can...

All right. After a short break I'm back. Things have been a bit strange lately. Personal news is that a a very friend of mine died. Feel like I have to take a minute to remeber Andy. He was a very good person and a great designer and he'll be sorely...

We were internally. That's where I've been the last few weeks (aside from the holiday). I'm helping our sustained engineering team with figuring out issues on Update Rollup 2. So far we've solved a bunch of problems and sadly most were not even related...

Okay I admit that I'm coming to this conversation really really late. To say that I had an epiphany about on-demand is like saying you didn’t realize you were hungry until you’d already starved to death. It sure seems obvious now. Now before I go...

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/nov05/11-16CableLabsPR.mspx

With any product launch there are issues - and Rollup 2 is no different. The biggest issue for the Media Center team is that we have a lot more customers with a lot of different configurations (new countries, XBOX 360s, home built machines, etc) and...

On that last post there was a good conversation about DIVX. I'd like to expand on this a little bit to help explain the process we go through in determining what features go into the product. For the sake of the rest of this post we’ll just talk...

I promised myself to keep this up to date by blogging everyday other day at a minimum. Right now I'm working on a post to go more into feature development - and it is taking longer then I'd hoped. I've also been filling in for a few areas here at work...

Wow! That last post got a lot of comments. :) I'm going to be back on topic for my blog here a bit more and talk about project management on such a cool product. Media Center is a lot of fun to work on, and as you can tell from all the suggestions...

With all the questions about Vista I thought it might be interesting to talk about where we are in the project and to see if there were things you were hoping to see. Right now we're in a bug fixing phase. That means we are working on closing down...

Some have asked for more detail on Away Mode and what it does: Away Mode does the following when invoked: Shuts down the video signal at the port Mutes all system audio Blocks HID and PS/2 input devices (so your cat does not walk across...

Okay so one of the best things about being a project manager is getting to use all the new technology coming out. The comment about Away Mode made me think that it might be worth posting what I've been able to use to see if there are questions I can...

So by default this blog software doesn't allow anonymous comments. I turned them on. Personally I like to be anonymous sometimes - so I'll extend the same ability.