Microsoft had a fairly large (Media Center) presence at DigitalLife and I managed to sneak away Thursday for a bit to attend their press conference and visit the booth. In addition to educating the uninitiated in Media Center functionality, Microsoft also had new extenders on display ($300 and up from DLink, Linksys, and Niveus) and announced the public beta of Internet TV.
In the booth, MS reps had folks focus on the new extenders from their partners. I told them I already own an almost-great MCE extender in the 360, that all it needs to reach greatness is Divx and Xvid support. Bryan Koski, of the Windows group, went on to tell me that Media Center functionality is pretty much a self-contained chunk of code… Whatever powers the new extenders should ultimately end up intact on the 360. He didn’t know (or wouldn’t say) if that meant this fall or down the road, but he seemed fairly confident all new functionality would be retained in any 360 update.