Worth Reading?
I never got around to playing with one of HP’s set-top Digital Entertainment Centres, and now it looks like unless I do some eBay trawling I never will; they’ve culled the whole range. Apparently “resource constraints” has forced them to choose between the AV-rack style MCE boxes and the newer line of Media Smart integrated TVs and Vista-based PVRs, and they’ve decided to go with the latter.
It’s a potentially risky move; they’re likely cutting out customers who already have recently-bought TVs, who don’t want to have to upgrade their screen when their PVR hardware is outdated, and those people who simply can’t afford the extra for a Media Smart unit.
Apparently they’re going to focus on making the Media Smart range at least partially compatible with UPnP streaming standards, so that they’ll work as part of any Vista setup.
CEpro [via eHomeUpgrade]
I’m not sure how risky this is, really. These were always high end devices, and I doubt they sold that many of them in the first place. It’s great that HP was a major innovator in this space, but I can’t blame them for pulling out of a niche market.