Anyone know if they are going to release soft/hardware to build Media center PC's? Or to convert a PC into a media center? I know they will have to eventually, but any offical news? I seached google and microsoft and haven't seen a thing

I was trying to integrate the microwave with IP but the directions from Micro$oft confuscated me. Can anyone tell me why I am having so many problems? Here's what they emailed me:

Microsoft TV Dinner Installation Instructions

You must first remove the plastic cover. By doing so you agree to accept and honor Microsoft rights to all TV dinners. You may not give anyone else a bite of your dinner (which would constitute an infringement of
Microsoft's rights). You may, however, let others smell and look at your dinner and are encouraged to tell them how good it is.

If you have a PC microwave oven, insert the dinner into the oven. Set the oven using these keystrokes: \mstv.dinn.//08.5min@@50%heat// Then
enter:ms//start.cook_dindin/yummy\|/yum~yum:-)gohot#cookme.

If you have a Mac oven, insert the dinner and press start. The oven will set itself and cook the dinner.

If you have a Unix oven, insert the dinner, enter the ingredients of the dinner (found on the package label), the weight of the dinner, and the desired level of cooking and press start. The oven will calculate the time and heat and cook the dinner exactly to your specification.

Be forewarned that Microsoft dinners may crash, in which case your oven must be restarted. This is a simple procedure. Remove the dinner from the oven and enter ms.no.&*%*.good/tryagain\again/again.&*%*. This
process may have to be repeated. Try unplugging the microwave and then doing a cold reboot. If this doesn't work, contact your hardware vendor.

Many users have reported that the dinner tray is far too big, larger than the dinner itself, having many useless compartments, most of which are empty. These are for future menu items. If the tray is too large
to fit in your oven you will need to upgrade your equipment.

Dinners are only available from registered outlets, and only the chicken variety is currently produced. If you want another variety, call Microsoft Help and they will explain that you really don't want another
variety. Microsoft Chicken is all you really need.

Microsoft has disclosed plans to discontinue all smaller versions of their chicken dinners. Future releases will only be in the larger family size. Excess chicken may be stored for future use, but must be saved only in Microsoft approved packaging.

Microsoft promises a dessert with every dinner after '98. However, that version has yet to be released. Users have permission to get thrilled
in advance.

Microsoft dinners may be incompatible with other dinners in the freezer,causing your freezer to self-defrost. This is a feature, not a bug. Your freezer probably should have been defrosted anyway.

For further information, browse our website.

Nice one Tom,

I love analogies!

I guess investing a lot of time and money into any product is a risk of sorts, since any company can go belly up. But CQC definitely is not a fly by night company or anything. It is continuing to grow and improve. The 1.2 release just went up a couple days ago, and the upcoming releases will bring some major new features.

Given the price, if you are going to take a risk, why not take a risk on a product that goes for $200 to $250 rather than one that goes for $2500 to infinity, right? If you are remotely technical, then you won't have any trouble with CQC. If you have some programming skills (in the Java/C++/C# type family) you can really make it hum by using the built in CML language to create very powerful macros.

Anyway, it is definitely the case that more and more functionality will be moving onto the PC, and CQC is at the forefront of this trend, integrating a powerful front end, IR control, X-10 control, serial, socket and USB device control, extensive back end for the traditional automation features, application control, user based security, full network distributed architecture, and so forth.

As to the Windows stability jokes, that's a common concern, but it all depends on what you want to do. If you are really concerned with stability, but put a bootable Windows image with CQC image on a CD and boot from that, into a box with ECC memory and a small RAID drive system. That would be every bit as stable as any CE device.

Most ATMs out there run a stripped down version of some general purpose OS booting from a fixed image, and a number of devices in the home theater world are really just closed general purpose PC architectures booting a fixed image. Where the instability comes from in most systems is from the constant installation of applications and viruses and and questionable drivers and the like, by naive users. A PC in the closet that is serving as the control system shouldn't be exposed to any of that kind of abuse and should remain very stable.

But, the great thing about software based systems is that, if you aren't particularly concerned about it, you don't have to do any of this or spend anything for robustness you don't need. If you are just controlling your home theater from your HTPC, is it really going to end your life if you kill the PC with a virus by surfing porn on the big screen late one night? Not that any of us would do that of course. For most folks they would just have Ghost'ed the drives, so they just put it back and pick up again, and take the consequences of how they chose to use it. But you have the choice with a PC based system. If you are using it for full home control, you can create a very stable system and put in the closet and it will be totally stable. CQC's networked architcture means you can manage the central CQC coponents on that closeted central PC from anywhere on the network.

One interesting possibility these days is a very small form factor PC, of which there are lots these days. Put a very small drive in it, use the on-board video, if is has a PCI slot put a 2, 4, or 8 port multi-port serial card in it (or use an outboard one on a USB port), they have USB and firewire and ethernet ports built in generally. Combine that with either a CD boot image or a flash card image, and that's a very intersting little 'automation appliance'. Once I get enough revenues to start exploring this, I will be looking into providing such an appliance for customers who don't wan to roll their own.

Buy a mid-sized or desktop sized touch screen LCD and sit it beside the couch, and add CQC, and you have a control and automation appliance that can do everything that the big boys can do, for probably half the price of just the base Crestron CPU (which cannot run any of your other software and which still requires a very expensive, proprietary Crestron touch screen.)

Dean, haven't you learned from the AVS bashing you had that your product at this time is for DYI types, not us professional integrators? We need a complete package, and that means not sending you the equipment so that you can build the driver for a common Denon receiver as you have requested in the past.

Yeah. It should have been invisiblificated. Sorry.

And once I learned German and ran across the original World War I word for "tank," that new armored gun on a truck, which they called a Schuetzengrabenvernichtungsautomobil, I had no problem seeing a need for a word and creating one.

Think I'll just stick to saying "tank" but I do like the German word for bra: holzemfrumfloppin

"Dean, haven't you learned from the AVS bashing you had that your product at this time is for DYI types, not us professional integrators? We need a complete package, and that means not sending you the equipment so that you can build the driver for a commn Denon receiver as you have requested in the past."

I guess I didn't learn that, because I don't think it's a valid argument. If a user has a device for which whatever C&A system you've selected doesn't have a driver, you just don't do that job? Or do you get someone to do a driver for it? Don't tell me that whatever system you use has a driver for every device in existence.

If you are a professional integrator, you are buying and installing the equipment. Therefore you should be in the position to have someone do a driver for it if it's not already supported. Many of the devices CQC supports were sent to me by owners or integrators, and they seemed to think that this was completely reasonable. I turn them around quickly and get their devices back to them with a good driver done.

No system can have a driver for every device you might need to support. What has to be provided in the 'package' is the functionality required to put those drivers to work once done, and CQC has that.

Most people aren't going to base their decision about which C&A system to use based on whether a driver will have to get done for them before they use it, they will base that decision on the performance vs. the price.

Dean,

It's not reasonable to expect people to ship their products to you just so you can write a driver. Take a step back from the promotion of your product and see it from everyone elses point of view!

IMO you should be looking at a way to port existing control data over to your system. If that's not possible, I would recommend re-thinking the heart of your system.

In order for me to be a happy satisfied customer, your system would have to work with nearly all of the components I install. If once every several months or so, I had to send you an obscure item for porting, I could live with that.

I think you are on the right track. A software only solution would be well received so long as it isn't "clunky."

[quote]
It's not reasonable to expect people to ship their products to you just so you can write a driver. Take a step back from the promotion of your product and see it from everyone elses point of view!
[/quote]

I don't expect them all to, but plenty of them don't seem to see it as a problem. One recent customer sent me Denon 3803, Theta Dreadnaught, CS-2, and Extron switcher all at once. He considered it perfectly reasonable because he wanted a software solution and I wasn't charging him anything to do the drivers, and he was waiting for the installers to be ready for the hardware. I have a user lending me a Lutron RA system this week to do a driver for. They want a good software solution, and it benefits them to help the solution that they think is best to suit their needs.

And, when dealing with professional installers, who are buying new equipment to install, I don't see a problem with it at all (since they can just ship it here from the factory and I can then ship it on when done.) I'm doing the driver for free, so all it costs is shipping. And if a software based product cuts your costs even five percent of a $30K job, it would more pay off, and I think it could cut more than that.

And of course each device only has to be done once, it's not like you have to ship every device every time. So if you are tending to install a fairly standard set of devices, it won't take long to get the core set of them covered.

More manufacturers are providing equipment to me as the product picks up steam, so it's becoming less and less of an issue. I have a pretty steady stream of devices coming in now. And more importantly, more users are doing drivers, which is the best of all worlds, since they get the devices supported that they want, they get a free copy of the product in return, I get to keep my time devoted to core functionality increase, and other users get access to these new drivers.

40 drivers went out in the 1.2 release, and of course some of those cover multiple devices or a whole family of devices, so the device support is starting to pick up pretty well. Yes, it's company and product bootstrapping the old fashioned way, instead of trying to get some venture capitalist to give me quick bucks, but hock me up to my eyeballs and throw me out when I stand up for the customer and product instead of the profits. It'll be a better company and a better product in the end, though it means a slower ramp up now.

Anyway, I'm not expecting anything of anyone, other than they do what they think is best for themselves. But if they think that CQC is something that can work for them, I'm ready and happy to do drivers for them if they get me the hardware.