Extendergate: What an obscure hardware glitch says about Microsoft's future
A few days ago, some Windows Media Center enthusiasts got a rude shock, as Linksys DMA2100 and DMA2200 extender devices suddenly stopped working. I read initial reports of this issue on Friday and confirmed earlier today …
Context & Ripple Effects
The broken devices are the same ones this site covered at their peak: when v2 extenders went up for ordering in November 2007 and landed that December, they were the flagship way to push Media Center around the home TV. Three years later the same hardware died without any user action, which is why the failure reads as a statement about the platform rather than one bad device.
The timing sharpens that reading. The failure lands days after Microsoft's Kinect launch and amid a documented string of abandoned consumer hardware efforts — WebTV, Spot Watch, Ultimate TV, Ultra Mobile PC, Smart Display — while Gavriella Schuster concedes tablets are eating netbook sales. Enthusiasts who built setups around Media Center after Microsoft added the Internet TV feature in 2007 now have direct evidence the platform's upkeep is not guaranteed.
First-order effects
- Owners of Linksys DMA2100 and DMA2200 extenders lose working Media Center access overnight through no action or fault of their own, turning a purchased appliance into a paperweight pending a fix.
- Microsoft takes a credibility hit on its update pipeline: whatever change broke the extenders reached users automatically, echoing the 2007 patch that sent PCs 'haywire'.
Second-order effects
- Enthusiasts and home-theater integrators who still recommend Media Center-plus-extender setups face a trust problem — the platform's value proposition depended on devices keeping working for years, and this shows they may not.
- Cisco's Linksys brand absorbs the support burden and reputational cost of a failure rooted outside its own firmware cycle, complicating its pitch for future living-room hardware partnerships.
Third-order effects
- If unattended updates can silently kill third-party hardware, buyers of Microsoft-dependent consumer devices will increasingly discount longevity — a structural penalty for any ecosystem play built on Microsoft continuing to maintain a niche platform.
- The episode fits the pattern behind Extendergate itself: Microsoft's living-room attention migrating from PC-centric Media Center extension toward dedicated devices like Kinect, leaving older accessory categories to rot — a deployment-commitment gap between what Microsoft ships and what it sustains.
The trend: Microsoft's home-media ambitions are shifting from maintained platforms like Media Center toward standalone hardware plays like Kinect, stranding the accessories and users invested in the older model.