Rob Jones

The latest version of Microsoft's Media Center software, Edition 2005, came out this month. It's not a massive upgrade on the current version, which was a little disappointing, but it still builds on what people have been running over the past year.

It came at an opportune time. I spent a day at Evesham's premises a few weeks back, seeing where they build their PCs and chatting to their research and development people about what they are working on and what trends are exciting them.

Media Center PCs were high on their minds, and they showed me the next version of their Ebox, which they were in the process of tweaking before it was released on 12 October.

It still uses the consumer DVD-shaped case, but runs a bit faster and obviously uses the new version of Microsoft's software.

Much of their effort when I was there was going into making the system run quieter. Like many manufacturers, noise is a big focus at the moment as more people demand improved performance from quiet machines, and the Evesham engineers were working on shaving off a couple of extra decibels from the Ebox S, in part by using some specialist components.

In terms of TV functionality, Media Center Edition 2005 has dual channel capabilities and is an improvement on the previous version, but, in my opinion, it's still not a patch on the Sky Plus box. I've had it for six months, and it has changed the way we watch television.

Far from watching more hours of TV, as experts predicted, I now watch less. Instead of aimlessly flicking between channels when in front of the telly, I'll watch what I want to see and, once it's over, I'll usually turn it off.

I rarely watch programmes as they are broadcast anymore, and have found that I've also become really impatient, fast-forwarding, not only through the adverts, but the theme tune and bits I find boring (such as the pundits on Match of the Day).

I've become so used to having the ability to pause and rewind that when I listen to my analogue radio, it annoys me that I can't do the same. So, a function I never knew I needed six months ago will probably now push me into upgrading to digital radio in the near future.

Microsoft could do well to learn from the simplicity of set-up and ease of use of Sky Plus for the TV element of its Media Center. I had a Media Center PC on test for a couple of months, and getting the TV to work properly was far too difficult.

The solution to the problem I experienced was odd yet simple and, annoyingly, when I spoke to a major retailer afterwards, it admitted that it was a known issue. But that doesn't help consumers when retailers don't pass this information on.

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