History
Originally codenamed "Freestyle" during development, Windows Media Center was first included with a special edition of Windows XP called Windows XP Media Center Edition. A new version of Windows Media Center was included in Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate editions. The user interface was redesigned and tailored for the 16:9 aspect ratio. Support for multiple tuners was added in later releases and varies depending upon the version of the operating system purchased. Support for many Windows Media Center Extender hardware devices, that had been released pre-Vista, was also dropped leaving many owners out of luck if they did not upgrade to one of the supported Windows Vista versions from the Windows XP Media Center Edition. Also introduced to U.S. users was Internet TV, which allows access to streaming content through the Media Center interface also allows video game content.
Microsoft later updated Windows Vista Media Center with a feature pack known as TV Pack 2008. This release, which was previously codenamed "Fiji" was only made available via OEMs for new computers that came preinstalled with the update. It is not available as an update for existing Windows Vista Media Center users. The update tweaked the user interface, replaced the .dvr-ms filetype with .wtv files, added support for digital subchannels, QAM, as well as increased the total number of each type of tuner allowed, added DVB-S and MHEG. In the beta there was support for H.264 (which allows for DirecTV) streams, however that feature was removed from the release version.
Much of the functionality added with TV Pack 2008 was included with the version of Media Center included in Windows 7, along with an update to the user interface.
In April 2012, Microsoft announced that Media Center would not be included in Windows 8. Instead, it will be part of a Media Center Pack add-on available only for Windows 8 Pro, and a Pro Pack that upgrades the standard edition of Windows 8 to Windows 8 Pro with Media Center.
Read more about this topic: Windows Media Center
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