Tales of Windows Media Center Program Management

Why Aren’t People More Excited About Media Center?

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 being said I don’t see a lot of people using Media Center all the time. We don’t get a ton of press and sometimes I feel like Media Center is getting lost in the general Vista wave. I personally believe that a significant portion of those 20 million users don’t even know Media Center is there for them to use.

As I’ve said before, people on the Media Center team are huge enthusiasts for the product. Everyone on the team uses Media Center at home. Personally I use two XBOX 360s to stream content through my house (TV, music, videos, etc).

 I love using this and everyone who visits is pretty excited and impressed. I sometimes sit back and think about the fact that I live in the “home of tomorrow” today. Ten years ago this type of setup would have been outside of the realm of realistic and now we have it.

Without going into too many specific features that you might want, why do you think most people are not aware or don’t use Media Center? I honestly believe Media Center is pretty good value with no guide fees and easy upgrade routes, especially if people are already buying a new computer.

I have my opinions but I don’t want to taint the responses. I’d love to understand what the community thinks is missing to get the average user excited and interested.  I’ll be in the comments as usual.

Ugh! So Much to Blog About - Just not Quite Yet

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 to keep everyone engaged.

One thing I have been working on a bit why my management is future planning for the next year or so. Nothing is set in stone and most are general ideas, but it brings me to my question.

What do you think Media Center will be like in five years? What will be the big features? What will be the major changes? What will users expect?

I'm just really curious about what folks think might be here. I personally don't know or have any notion of the long term plans in this area.

This is just something to pass the time until I got start blogging about what I'm working on. There is a nice long story there that will go into a lot of software process and how the system works. Can't wait to tell it. :)

Glitching on Live TV with AMD Dual Core Processors

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.

Hopefully if anyone still has issues here this will fix the glitching for them.

Here you go: http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/amdcpusetup.exe

Random Features I Like About Vista and Some Other Thoughts

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 coming in late to a project such as Vista. Let me know if this sounds like a good topic.

I had a thought today as well. There has been a lot of negative things said about Vista. What I’m not sure people realize is that Vista is still a Beta product (beta meaning NOT released). It has to be one of the most widely used and scrutinized pieces of Beta software ever. There have been so many eyes and such high expectations that any Beta release would be a let down. Software development is an ugly process. Every milestone you build to a certain level of quality and then immediately tear it down right after the milestone is over with new check-ins, etc. You don’t tear all the way down but I like to think of each major milestone in software development as spending ½ the time getting back to the quality of the previous milestone and then another ½ of the time getting to twice the quality of the previous milestone. Every time you take a bunch of new code on a large project your quality will always suffer for a bit.

We’ve been releasing over and over again in between milestones – essentially showing our dirty laundry. So you see the dips in quality and then it is easy to get hyper focused on issues you have or others have. Vista isn’t perfect – but I think it is actually getting to be pretty good. RC1 is running well and I’m using it on my laptop now. Remember what you’ve seen of Vista is Beta. Oh and Microsoft has been listening. I can speak to that, especially on the Media Center team.

Okay, off the soapbox. Sorry. Here are a few things that I like in Vista in random order. I’ll continue to post them an as I blog in the future. Oh one more thing. Above all using the XBOX 360 with CableCard is killer. I’m watching HDTV through two different 360s and it just make me happy. Very happy. Even without CableCard the XBOX 360 implementation is just cool. Everyone should get this…

Browsing music by artist in MCE – I know this is a small feature but I think this is the coolest thing ever. Why? Well I was always kind of slob with my CDs. I’d throw them into the wrong cases and onto the shelf in the random order. So I’d pull out my copy of “The Wall” and end up with John Denver. I was just too lazy to keep things in the proper order.

I know this view was in Media Center XP but without album art. Album art is key for me. That’s how I know what albums I have. I’m the kind of person who doesn’t really know track names – just numbers. :)

Aero Glass – I’m a UI sucker. I love cool new UI. I think Aero Glass just looks really nice. The transparency is pretty and the effects are nice. Along the same lines with the new video drivers I like the new video driver model. The live preview feature has really come in handy several times (think IE downloads). Very cool. I also like the new “alt+tab” features with the live preview and window stacking.

New Windows Games – no comment. My manager might read this. :)

Windows Update – I think the new simplified model is much nicer and easier to use/navigate. Having worked on Windows Update years and years ago this is nice to see.

And a few things I don’t really like:

User Account Control – Now I get this for newer users or less experiences users. It helps people know that their operating system is being changed. But me – well I know enough about computers that I don’t need the extra help. I should be careful too because I know the architect for this feature and he works out a lot.

Now Playing Preview in Media Center – this seems smaller to me in Media Center and I miss the bigger preview that I used to have in XP.

Display Settings – I mess around with my monitors a lot. In XP the display settings were just a right click away on my desktop. Now in Vista I have to right click to personalize and then I have to go to Display Settings.

That’s enough typing for now. I’ll post more soon. See you in the comments.

Note: One minor clarification. This list is not meant to be complete or to focus on the big features of Vista. I'm just pointing out some stuff that I like. Sometimes, for me, the little things make a big difference. I imagine this is the same for others. There has been some much coverage of Vista that some of the nice touches get overlooked and I've been using Vista long enough to appreciate some of these smaller changes. I edited the title to make this more clear.

Dave - where did you go?

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 on Media Center. There have been theories that I left (see http://mediacenter.mattgoyer.com/archives/2006/08/25/1171#comments).

The truth is much less glamorous. I have a pregnant wife and a toddler who doesn't like to go to sleep. Those excuses aside - I've also been "dark" working on some new features for MCE. We still have a few surprises up our sleeves. :).

Nobody from Microsoft has asked me to stop blogging or to hold back. As a matter of fact I've taken quite a bit of flack for being a bad blogger.

I'm back now. Hopefully better then before. I've also had an idea on how to make this blog a bit better and maybe different.

If you've read my blog in the past you know that I love the two way conversations and the comments. So here's my proposal:

Suggest topics. We can talk about anything you guys like. Leave ideas in the comments and I'll pick at least one a week.

If there aren't any I'll pick a topic - and we can go from there.

I wish I could tell you about my project, I really do - but that will have to wait for just a bit longer so that is the only limit I have right now.

We can talk about Vista, Media Center, project management, program management, anything really. I'm game.

Oh and I really am sorry. Seriously.

 

 

I'm on the Media Center Show

Check out the interview and my voice taking up space on the internet. :)

Does anyone like how they sound when recorded?

One Big Secret Revealed - Media Center Retail and Upgrade!

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 from a technical perspective.

What does that mean? It means I own making sure that customers who either buy a standalone Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate or upgrade a machine to Vista have a good experience.

The project is multi-faceted with our attempts at protecting our customers aimed at telling them upfront if their machine is modern enough to run the desired applications, making changes to how Vista works to make it run better if you're on the edge, and generally doing our best to be upfront.

In case you missed it the announcement for SKUs is here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/feb06/02-26WinVistaProductsPR.mspx

And Charlie Owen speaks to this in his blog.

Over the next bit of time you'll see a few new things come online for this project.

Personally I think that this is huge for Media Center and our customers. I'm excited and I hope you are too.

Feel free to ask questions - I always monitor comments.

More cool stuff coming soon...

 

Media Center Chats

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.

You can get more info at: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/chats/default.mspx

Thanks for all the suggestions below. We are working on making it easier to get info about Online Spotlight for the Vista timeframe and we're doing a lot of work to make it better.

In terms of the Media Center platform I'm working on some community stuff that will hopefully make things better for enthusiast devs as well as others. It might be a bit of time but I'll announce plans here. :)

A New Role on Media Cener

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 Manager would worry about making sure everyone gets their work done. Writes their specs, hits coding milestones, tests, etc. The ownership is at a very high level.

As a Program Manager you spend your time getting very specific about features of a products or delivarbles. I've joined what we call our "Platform Team." This team is responsible for making Media Center something extensible and ensuring that we have a usable and worthwhile development platform. I'll be on the same team as Aaron Stebner and working closely with Charlie Owen and Micahel Creasy.

Specifically I will be owning Online Spotlight, The Media Center SDK, and a couple of other things I can't quite talk about yet - but hope to talk about very soon.

I really excited about this change. I very interested in getting our development community excited about Media Center (including hobbyists and casual developers). I think there are also a lot of opportunities in Online Spotlight to do some very cool things - things I hope to speak about here.

To celebrate my change I have nine Windows Live Messenger invites that are up for grabs. All you have to do is tell me what you'd like to see out of Media Center community efforts in the comments. I'll take honest feedback. Sarcastic comments might get you a laugh but not a Messenger invite. :)

Note: If you want the invites you need to send me your email address or have a linked address on your log-in. Can't send one over if you don't tell me how to get in touch with you. :)

 

How embarrassing! How did that time bomb get into Vista anyway?

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.

 

When developing software you normally write code and check it into what is called a source tree. Think of the source tree like a library. Each source file is a book. You can check a book out and check it in.

 

The source tree keeps track of a lot of things:

 

• Who checked something in
• What were the differences
• When was it done
• History of the file

 

There is a lot more that a source does or can do – but that is the gist.

 

Once all the code is checked into a source tree you do what is called building. A build is when the source code gets compiled into something that can be used by the computer itself. A lot of things happen at build time but the main point is to think of this step as what makes the application. The best explanation for this is that compiling (building for the sake of this post) is what translates the code written by people into a form that can be understood by computers. Way oversimplified but enough to tell the story.

 

So rewind to last summer (2005). One part of the Media Center team was working furiously to finish Update Rollup 2 for Media Center 2005. All of the code was being checked into the Media Center 2005 source tree so that it could be built to make the update.

 

At the same time another part of the team was working on the Vista Media Center project and checking into a different source tree. Makes sense, right? Two projects. Two source trees.

 

Well as we were finishing up with the Update Rollup for Media Center 2005 we did what was called an “integrate.” This means that we take the code from the Media Center 2005 source tree and add it to the Media Center Vista source tree often called “merging.”

 

Merging is done so that the work that was done on the current project isn’t lost for the new project. The tricky part is that the same file might have been worked on in both projects already – so a merge has to be managed to resolve any conflicts. Basically you have to decide which of two files to keep – or beyond that which parts of the two files to keep.

 

So when we got to this merge point we still had a time bomb in the Update Rollup for Media Center 2005. This made sense. We weren’t done with the project and were sending betas out. We want to give people time to test – but we don’t want beta software to run forever, thus the time bomb. We make it expire after a certain period.

 

Well as you might guess the time bomb code got merged into the Windows Vista Media Center tree. Normally not a big deal. After doing a merge towards the end of a project a developer is required to check-in any fixes into both source tree locations. This avoids the need to do another expensive merge and helps make sure that fixes get into both projects. Somehow this particular removal of the time bomb was missed.

 

My guess about how this happened; I have a few:

 

• The developer who fixed the time bomb for Update Rollup for Media Center 2005 forgot to fix it in Windows Vista.
• There was a merge conflict for the time bomb in the file and the time bomb code was kept instead of removed
• A file with the time bomb was reverted for some reason and the merge was lost
• We didn’t manage the check-ins tightly enough

 

Worst part though is that we normally would have caught this in testing. We run what is called a “Media Verification Test” to ensure that we don’t have anything like a time bomb and a lot of other last minute things in our product before we release major milestones such as betas or final releases. In the case of the build that had the time bomb it was a minor release for us and the media verification test pass wasn’t run.

 

What’s the final outcome of all of this?

 

The most important thing that can come out this from a project management perspective is to answer the questions, “how can this never happen again?”

 

Well a few things.

 

• We will add the time bomb test to a more routinely run test pass.
• I am going off to investigate how we can do something when we build (remember that a lot happens when we build) to set a dynamic time bomb so it will never be missed again.
• Likely on the next round of dual projects we’ll add more stringent requirements on checking into both source trees
• Review time bombs entirely to see if there is a better way to make sure beta copies don’t last forever.

 

A while back we talked about bureaucracy and process being taxes on being creative. From above I hope you can see that we need some of this to avoid mistakes and to help manage an incredibly complex and very difficult project.  

Issue Fixed: Media Center Expiring in in Vista Community Tech Preveiw #3

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 have some work to catch up on first since fixing this issue took a good part of the last two days.

 

Media Center Expiring in in Vista Community Tech Preveiw #3

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 out very shortly to fix the problem. If anyone is interested I'm happy to explain how this happened.

Needless to say this isn't a good way to start the new year.

Wish I had this when I was in school

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 put a few teams together to be really different.

Very cool indeed.

 

Got a new toy

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 missed. I can trace a lot of my computer career back to him in the early days of Kinko's. Long story that I might tell one day. :)

In other news I got a new toy to play with: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/mediacenterdvr/LGguide.mspx

I haven't had a lot of time to look at it yet, but I'm pretty excited to give it a try. We've been hearing about them at work for about a year or so. I'll post my thoughts here as I have them.

I'm giving Andy's eulogy so I'm off to write that - and might be offline for a week or so. I"ll try to post again before I leave for the week.

Seeing AMD Dual Core TV Glitching

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 to Update Rollup 2 directly. Not your problem, I know, but after spending time working on a project and then having issues sure takes the wind out of the sails. Anyway...

We've been hearing about TV glitching on dual core AMD machines from various folks. Problem is actually on the AMD side and is mostly likely related to the Hardware Abstraction Layer.

Here’s what you do if you see glitching on an AMD Dual Core proc.

 

Install the update for the processor on this page: http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_13118,00.html specifically the dual core processor driver, http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/amdcpu.exe

 

So far I’ve be running live TV for over a day with no issues.