Product Promotion: Deception by Selective Omission

Last October, I grumbled about the fact that PC peripheral manufacturers were still selling analog TV tuners (USB-based, along with AGP, PCI and PCI Express add-in cards) without alerting consumers that, subsequent to the February 17, 2009 NTSC cutoff date, this gear would be functionally useless. The same issue holds true for TVs without integrated ATSC tuners, unless an external ATSC set-top box is added to the setup (or, of course, if the consumer doesn't care about over-the-air reception and instead gets his or her TV content from cable, IPTV or satellite sources), and Republican members of the House of Representatives' Committee on Energy and Commerce have just introduced a bill that'd require TV manufacturers to clearly indicate this shortcoming via product labeling. Perhaps not surprisingly to you, I think this is a great idea; check the links for Ars Technica and Engadget's thoughts.

A similar campaign of promotion-with-deception is going on in the world of Windows Media Center Extenders. Just this morning, an email from Geeks.com dropped into my inbox; after entering code NOWIRES, a refurbished Linksys WMCE54AG is only $99.99. It's a great price for a product that originally sold for $300, mind you, although Woot! recently had them for $10 cheaper. But what's behind the firesales? I strongly suspect it's the in-progress transition from Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 to the MCE functionality built into various Windows Vista editions. What Geeks.com doesn't tell you is that, as I recently pointed out, Media Center Extenders developed for Windows XP MCE will not work with Windows Vista. This shortcoming also affects HP's Media Center Extender, along with the software package developed for the first-generation Xbox. The only Media Center Extender guaranteed at this time to work with Windows Vista is the Xbox 360.