The President of the Windows Division Steven Sinofsky has confirmed that Media Center will return in Windows 8.

He mentions that Microsoft has "work to do" concerning the quality & compatibility of add-ins in MediaCenter.

TV is the most used feature in Windows Media Center, traditional media (DVD and CD) are less common used than streaming and file-based content. According to Steven Sinofsky"By comparison, Media Player (66% of Windows users in July) and IE (88%) are popular rendering engines for all types of media content, including an increased volume of "premium" and streaming content."

Media Center will not be part of the 1st pre-release builds. Some other features/capabilities will not be in the 1st pre-release builds including: Windows 7 games, DVD Creator, upgrade setup, Dot Net 3.5 (Note there are perhaps a couple of other relatively low profile items but just wanted to hit the major ones here). These are engineering decisions as well as business decisions.

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