[Chris Lanier] I would like to add that the market for Extenders will boom if Microsoft can get it right….Again, there isn‚Äôt much that needs to change, but the things that do are deal breakers for a large percent of people who would purchase one today and tomorrow.

Chris points to several posts from Thomas Hawk, Ed Bott and Matt Goyer who are talking about Media Center Extenders.

I think the problem is far greater than whether or not you can stream HDTV to them, or whether or not they support a specific codec. Look, I consider myself fairly competent when it comes to these things, and I still can’t get even get Nero MediaHome to talk to my UPNP (um, plug and play!?) DVD player.

Until someone (Microsoft?) solves the basic usability issues and the codec hell problems, people are going to shy away from them. Heck, most home users can’t get wireless networking up and going, and we expect them to understand Divx/AAC/MP4/AVI/etc? Not going to happen, sorry.