HP Exits Media Center Business

MCE writes "The first big adapter of Microsoft's Media Center Edition is quietly dropping MCE. HP is ceasing production of its Digital Entertainment Center, the only real success story for Media Center PCs in a living-room form factor. As the first company to embrace Microsoft's MCE, at a time when the platform was still half-baked, HP was simply spent by the time Vista rolled around. Now the company will put its resources into MediaSmart, a new line of TVs with a digital media adapter (not an MCE) built in. HP insists that its departure is not a statement about the viability of the Media Center platform."

I think it was just a matter of...

[bluemonq]

...too much computer. If it was a pared-down machine with WinXP embedded, simplified interface (as in, maybe only Media Center?), etc. and brought it in under $500, it could have had a shot. However, computing on the couch (with a TV, no less) just feels odd to me, and probably to a lot of people out there. In addition, people who want a full-blown computer in their living room AND desktop are fairly limited in number - or at least that's what gut instinct is telling me.

There was a company called HP?

[Futurepower(R)]

LOL. HP was in the calculator business? Maybe with all the amazing failures at HP people will someday say, "HP was in the computer business?" Could the company stay in business if it couldn't make money with tricks like expensive ink [gizmodo.com] and abuse of customers that lack technical knowledge?

My experiences in the last few years with HP have been so terrible there is not enough room to document them all. When Carly Fiorina destroys a company, it stays destroyed. Like many technically oriented companies, HP has mostly incompetent people on the board of directors, who mostly have little technical knowledge.

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