Former Microsoft Employee Puts Windows Media Center SDK On GitHub

A former Microsoft employee has released the Windows Media Center software SDK via GitHub. Developers can’t do much with the SDK. The employee mainly wanted to preserve a piece of history.

The Windows Media Center SDK was put on GitHub by Charlie Owen. He previously worked with Microsoft’s eHome team that developed the media center software. He released the SDK under the organization name Skijump on GitHub. That name, he says, refers to a group of 150 volunteers within the Redmond company who promoted Media Center internally and externally in 2002.

Developers can’t do much with the SDK, although it does contain the source code of, among other things, the ‘Preview Tool Launcher’. “The Preview Tool is a pretty robust model for automation and the resource shows how you can take advantage of your own authoring tool,” said Owen. Whether Microsoft will eventually release the source code of the entire Windows Media Center is unknown.

Windows Media Center was Microsoft’s attempt to conquer the living room with HTPCs and other media systems. At the same time, they had to look less like traditional desktop PCs. The software contained a media player and an overview of music and videos present on the PC. There was also a TV recording option and the interface was adapted for remote controls.

The software appeared in Windows XP Media in 2002 and was also part of Windows Vista and Windows 7, except for the Starter and Home Basic editions. Windows Media Center was available as a paid add-on with Windows 8 Pro and Windows 8.1 Pro. In 2015, Microsoft announced that Media Center would not be part of Windows 10 due to declining usage.

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