Windows XP Media Center

ebowdia

Anyone have any experience with Media Center?

Would you recommend it?

Any TV card you would recommend for use with it?

tom_ass19

no i wouldn't recommend it, my friend had it for a while and said that it kept crashing and that it was very buggy.....go for it if u wana but i wouldnt, just stick wit xp pro

HomunQlus

I agree... it's a good idea, but not usable yet.

tom_ass19

yay!! somone agress with me......i feel so loved.....haha

FrankGrimes

I have the core features of MCE up and running. True it was much hassle to get setup, and will be more hassle to get all the additional features setup, but without a single shadow of a doubt it is totally and unequivocally worth the hassle.

Never before has technology had such an impact on my lifestyle. I work 16 hour days and only get about an hour winding down time a couple of nights a week. Now I can spend those watching my favourite shows from during the week. The official EPG is now released and is easy to setup (missing some irrelevant channels) and this removes one of the major setup headaches.

I can access my music collection in my sitting room or bedroom thanks to the extenders I bought (for cheap in US), and I can record something in the sitting room and then watch it elsewhere in the house. I have setup slideshows that play my photo collection on the tv in the sitting room - all this and much much more is possible even when someone is using the PC for normal PC stuff in the PC room! Xbox 360 (which I played yesterday and is quality) will also be an extender - so you can put a MCE PC in one room and have the xbox in the viewing room connected either wires or wirelessly.

Next thing for me to set up is the ability to schedule recordings remotely over the web (i.e. you're gonna miss the start of the match - logon from your PC or 3G phone and schedule a recording - it will wake up, record, and go back to sleep. Though of course you can watch recording before it has stop recording).

Then there's the radio, ability to stream TV channels from all over the world, built in MSN messenger, ability to burn DVDs with shows on them......the thing just plain rocks.

Much as it is a pain to setup, once its setup I have found it to be perfectly stable. MCE is actually XP with media center applications running on top of it - all that for €130!

Go for a Hauppage PVR 500 MCE (with AV Cable Set if you want dual set-top box input) or two Hauppage PVR 150s (again you'll need two STBs if you want full dual tuner functionality, though if you use basic cable you can just use one input on the 500). I have the 500 and the picture is excellent.

I got media as a treat for all the hard work on renovating our house and it feels like a great payback - thing is though my gf has fallen in love with it!

ebowdia

Cheers for the comments guys.

Frank, you sound well impressed with the setup you have, I hope I'll be just as impressed as mine. I have a couple of questions for you:

What sort of spec does your Media System PC have?
I'm assuming that the OS purchase doesn't include the remote control, you must buy a compatable one when purchasing the PVR?
How much is the PVR that you recommend? Is it PCI or USB?

dalk

The major hassle with setting up MCE is getting the right hardware... Setup is fairly painless, if you've installed an OS before. I found myself having to do more research before installation than i normally would.

I've been using MCE'05 for over 6months now. Although i feel slightly dirty praising a Microsoft product, its rock solid. It hasnt crashed once. But you got to remember that with a lot of Microsoft products MCE had been around for years, but it was only this version that seemed to have matured to a point where it was usuable and stable.

And it has changed my TV viewing habits for the better imo.

Instead of turning on the TV and flicking to find something (anything) to watch, you record what you actually want to see and then view it at your leisure...

And as already posted, and very important to me anyway, is that it passes the girlfriend/spouse test. My girfriend uses it. She likes it. She doesn't ask me how to do things, or want to go back to just 'normal' TV viewing etc. An important criteria for me, was that at no stage did i want to perform tech support...

The only gripe i have with MCE is its handling of large music libraries (like mine)... Its slow. Very slow. But its still usable. Hopefully the new version of WMP will sort this out.

FrankGrimes

Here's a link to my specs:

http://www.komplett.ie/k/shoplist.asp?mode=receive&si=260838&su=9BA29081-E395-4D80-AABD-09C82B06E003

it can be done much cheaper than this, and also way more silently if you are planning on having the pc in the same room as the tv (not an issue if using an extender like me or the new Xbox 360 as an extender).

checkout the Home Entertainment forum here for more advice, and post your spec before you buy for us all to have a look at first.

checkout http://www.thegreenbutton.com http://www.xpmce.com http://www.avforums.com for more info

you buy the MCE remote separately (30 quid), not one specifically for your tuner card. its on my list above.

I'm well impressed with it and can only see it getting better as time goes by - more and more plugins coming on stream (checkout the above sites for details) and hopefully the music library speeds up. Get it and you will love it, just make sure your hardware is compatible (search MS site for the compatiblity list).

Jabbathegut

I'm also looking at setting up a Media Centre machine.
Just one quick Q
Anyone got this up and running with NTL digital???

ebowdia

Thanks again Frank. I'll do some spec research and get back to you....

FrankGrimes

alright jabba,

I have it up and running with NTL digital. Problem is I only have one set-top box as yet so can only run one tuner (means I can't record one channel and watch another). This will be sorted when I get my new stb next week and the AV cable set for the PVR 500 MCE card.

Till then I'll just revert to my previous setup whereby I had dual tuners working for basic NTL cable, and I'm confident the digital will be no bother once I have the second stb.

Jabbathegut

Thanks Grimey

I'll be putting together a machine in the next month. Looking for something compact and silent so should be an interesting project. If its cool I'll PM ya if I have any q's.

Those Hauppage PVR 500 MCE cards look the business...

SouperComputer

have a looksie here for more MCE info:


http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054846003
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=320134
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=319680
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=208020
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=316690
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=316916
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=313099
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=267408


It does take a bit of tweaking to get it running the way you like. Crashing has not been an issue for me, ive had it on about 7 different systems now.

shanemort

I've my MCE set up fine working on NTL's basic service works brill

Question what codecs are you using Frank for watching downloaded films
and so on????

FrankGrimes

Haven't actually gotten round to watching any downloaded films (of the strictly legally distributed kind as I'm sure you meant) yet, and tbh I don't know whether or not MCE will play DIVX. I'm pretty sure the extenders (and xbox 360) don't and won't as MS don't want Hollywood to think of MCE as pro pirate.

As with everything else, I'm sure there's ways and means around it, in fact I think I remember seeing a post on it, and there would be details in the forums I listed above.

Jabba - yeh gimme a shout and me or one of the (far wiser) fellas round here will give you a dig out.

SouperComputer

MCE plays DIVX no problem, as with any other codec, it just needs to be installed.

Only caveat the that you cannot seek within a DIVX move from MCE, works as per bromal thru media plyaer though.

The extenders are custom hardware and software so DIVX is out of the questions until someone hacks it.

bungeecork

FrankGrimes wrote:

(...)ability to stream TV channels from all over the world(...)

Howdy. I don't have Media Center, but I do watch streaming TV channels all the time from wwitv and Lyngsat.

Are the channels you have mentioned above exclusive to Media Center?

jester77

I have it running for a year now and it's the business, very stable! I have my movie, music and picture collections all stored on it. Very easy to navigate, no going looking through your DVD's or CDs to see what you would like to listen to or watch. TV is great, I have a DVB-T card running perfectly in it, great picture.
What really impresses me is the online feature. I use the BBC and MTV ones alot. I'm not living in Ireland so I use the BBC for getting the news, also have Today FM streaming which is great. MTV is great for watching music videos, although it does sometimes manage to crash MCE.
Must have plugins are My Movies (Rollup 2 now has My DVD but I haven't used it as I've My Movies running perfectly), My Web Media and My Weather. There are plenty of others but they are the 3 I most use!
It does take alot of time to setup, particularly the Music. MS have a strange way of setting up tags but there is a plugin called Album Art Fixer which sorts that out.
One major gripe I have is that it doesn't play real media streams. This is very annoying for me as I RTE's radios use this format as do some good streaming tv channels!