So far, I have not gone into any much details about my new job. I wanted to settle into the position before giving a more complete overview of my job. Of course, I cannot say everything, especially when it relates to upcoming releases but an overview would be a good idea.

New new job is as part of the eHome Devices division, which focuses mainly on the Media Center Extender technology. Overall, Media Center Extenders are devices which can connect to a Media Center PC to share multimedia content. Until recently, the only extender out there was the Xbox 360 which could connect to Media Center PC to share video, pictures and music across a wired or wireless home network. But recently a first wave 3rd party extenders by manufacturers such as Linksys, D-Link and HP were released; essentially giving the same functionality at a lower cost than to have to dish out for a full Xbox 360.

Personally, I really like the new HP televisions with the extender technology built in. Simply plug your television into your home network and you can then browse your personal library of media content directly from your TV without the need for any external hardware. I think this is critical, especially for me, who envision the scenario where a single Media Center PC takes care of acting as a household DVR and all televisions simply act as extenders who access the video stream from the central computer.

You can find more information about the Media Center Extenders here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/mediacenterextender/default.mspx

So where do I fit in the scheme of all this? I am still technically a graphics programmer and will be focusing on the user interface technologies used by the Media Center Extenders (or MCX). This includes both the Xbox UI and also the needed technology for other 3rd party extenders. Although still graphics, it is done at a much lower level (especially on 3rd party extenders). For me, it is a move closer to my "Demo Scene" roots and should be an interesting challenge considering that most of 3rd party extenders run on fairly low-end CPUs where the user interface needs to be processed in real-time, even at 1080i resolutions!