08.13.2008 — Get ready for the next generation of Windows Vista Media Center, originally known as "Fiji" and now officially dubbed "Media Center TV Pack."

Microsoft is expected to tell all during CEDIA Expo 2008, but for now, even the savviest Microsoft followers are scratching their heads.

Microsoft released TV Pack to OEMs on July 17, and PC makers are beginning to talk about their products – first S1Digital at The Green Button, and now Fluid Digital.

Fluid Digital, based in The Woodlands, Texas, announced this morning its new Media Center with TV Pack.

What is TV Pack?

Even with all of the controversy surrounding Microsoft and Media Center in the past, it seems that Fiji has generated more angst and ire than other Microsoft initiatives.

TV Pack is still shrouded in secrecy. OEMs still are not allowed to talk about its innate features and cannot even mention the word "Fiji".

What they can say goes something like this, in the words of Chris Morley, executive vice president of Fluid Digital. "I can't speak for what other OEMs are doing. I can just tell you that these are the features of our PCs."

Let's start with the biggest and most controversial feature of TV Pack: It is not available for existing Vista PCs. You must buy a new computer to get this "upgrade."

Apparently, Microsoft believes that only OEMs are in the position to "ensure that users get the best experience possible" from TV Pack, according to Ben Reed of Microsoft's
Windows Media Center product marketing.

Of the five key TV Pack features outlined publicly by Microsoft, four of them concern enhancements for Europe and Japan; one of them offers relevance to U.S. customers: integration with Clear QAM tuners.

Clear QAM tuners enable the free reception of unscrambled digital programming sent "in the clear" by cable providers. They are becoming popular among home theater PC (HTPC) users who don't care to mess with (or pay for) digital content through CableCards, also known as digital cable receivers (DCR).

Today, integrating CableCard and QAM content within Media Center is inelegant, to say the least. TV Pack remedies some of the challenges.



"If you have digital cable receivers and clear QAM, mapping the tuners is seamless," says Fluid's Morley. "If you try to record ABC and the DCR is busy, it will ping the clear QAM."

In a related feature, the electronic programming guide (EPG) overall has enhanced functionality with TV Pack. For example, users create their own "Favorites" lists, so they don't have to scan thousands of channels just to get to one of their five or ten faves.

In addition to QAM integration, TV Pack supports four CableCards natively. With today's Vista Ultimate, Morley says, "to get four CableCards, you need to tweak the registry."

In addition, there is a TV Pack option called PlayReady, which is a new digital rights management (DRM) scheme that is a bit confusing. Ostensibly developed for transferring protected content to mobile devices, PlayReady now seems poised to help users stream CableCard content – that isn't flagged -- from one PC to another PlayReady-enabled PC.

"If you have two PlayReady-enabled PCs, along with an unreleased firmware update to the ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner," says Morley, "you will be able to share non-copy protected (free and clear) channels when you are using the tuners in conjunction with CableCards."

He adds that, currently, even clear channels are "locked down" the minute you use the tuners with a CableCard.

"PlayReady relaxes DRM a bit," he says.

Finally, we hear that there are some new audio options available through TV Pack. Allegedly, for example, you can create surround-sound set-ups for different modes.

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