NEWS - Thursday, January 8, 2004
XMC Extender Kit at CES 2004
Gates then unveiled the Xbox® Media Center Extender Kit, which combines a dedicated remote control with software that extends the Windows XP Media Center Edition experience throughout the home, allowing consumers to enjoy music, recorded television and photos from their PC using their Xbox game console. Nothing that Xbox enjoyed a successful holiday season, Gates announced that the game console is on track to meet its shipment forecast of 14.5 to 16.0 million worldwide by June 2004. Xbox Live(TM) continues to fuel excitement for the platform, with more than 70 games available on the service. This holiday, gamers broke Xbox Live records by playing more than 1 million game sessions per day over a five-day period. The presentation continued with a demonstration of the first Portable Media Center device from Creative Labs Inc., which makes it easy for people to take their favorite photos, music and home videos with them wherever they go. Gates also revealed that Napster LLC, CinemaNow Inc. and EMI Music are the first content suppliers to announce their support of Portable Media Center devices at launch. In addition, he noted the increased capabilities of Microsoft TV Foundation Edition 1.5, which enhances the consumer digital cable viewing experience by providing fully integrated support for high-definition television (HDTV) and digital video recording (DVR); and announced the arrival of high-definition video for Windows XP users, with 16 feature films being released as high-definition movies on DVD discs by a variety of publishers using Microsoft Windows Media 9 Series. (The movies offer video resolution of up to approximately six times that of today’s DVD video.)Source: http://biz.yahoo.com/
