'For years, many in the consumer electronics industry have viewed digital entertainment as a field of dreams: if you provide consumers with a solution, they'll build it into a larger experience - regardless of cost or complexity,' says Will Poole, senior vice president for the Windows Client division at Microsoft. With the debut today of the Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 and a host of related products and services, Microsoft and its partners aim to take digital entertainment to a new level of convenience, ease of use and affordability. Microsoft recognized this unfulfilled promise, and has worked with industry partners to create digital entertainment experiences that consumers can enjoy anywhere - in the home, around the home or on the go. They never got to experience much more than before. Unless someone in the family was tech-savvy or they were willing to drain the kids' college fund to buy a high-priced stack of audio/video equipment, the revolution never seemed to arrive at their home. Another let them download music on a portable device, but not videos. One 'solution' beamed TV around the house, but not music. But each time they visited their nearest electronics store, there were few choices. For more than a decade, they've been told that a home and personal electronics revolution was coming. The Analog family, while hypothetical, is like many these days. Those were the days when Mom, Pop, Bro and Sis were truly unconnected. When downloading music was equally complicated - or illegal. When they could only watch DVDs or listen to their music collection in one room of the house. Those were the days when there were few choices if they tried to bridge these islands or take their music, videos and pictures on the go. Those were the days when each room of their home and each of their electronic devices was an independent island in a vast electronic archipelago.

The good old days of home electronics weren't so good for the Analog family.

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