Where are all the Vista MCE reviews?

Krusty_Clown

Just wondering if anyone has come across any reviews of the MCE functionality within Vista since its release? I'm wondering if its worth the upgrade (my HW is fine)... Specifically interested in things like:

• How it works with Standby/S3 etc.
• Will it play all of my content (saw mention of the DivX problems).
• Known bugs
• FM Radio experience - It's gotta be better than 2005
• Hardware compatibility (Hauppage / nVidia / etc).
• Any changes to functionality, e.g. support for multiple sources/EPGs

That kind of thing..

8T8

There aren't too many detailed reviews yet it seems that focus solely on the media centre aspect actually it's not called MCE at all it is referred to as Windows Media Centre WMC but somehow I doubt the new name will stick. You can read Thurrots take on it here but he drinks from the kool aid of Microsoft a little too much for my liking.

I can give my own experiences of it;

How it works with Standby/S3 etc.

Working okay for me, word is this & a few other areas where XP MCE was flaky such as losing channels have been worked on & fixed in Vista MCE but only time will tell.

Will it play all of my content (saw mention of the DivX problems).

No compatibility problems here though some video codecs may need to be updated to work properly I'm currently using ffdshow tryout & everything is playable XviD, H.264 etc. Make sure you update graphics card drivers in some cases, download decoder builds of ffdshow tryout.

Known bugs

Too early to say I think, the worst I experienced was some sound crackling due to a sound/ethernet driver issue which I resolved by installing the Vista driver for it.

FM Radio experience - It's gotta be better than 2005

Stock driver doesn't support FM radio for me.

Update: Found Vista drivers on AMD/ATI's site and attempted to install with getting my very first Vista BSOD from the driver installer wohoo! after the reboot I went into the device manager and pointed Vista at the ATI folder and it installed the driver itself so ATI's installer still needs some work methinks. Anyway went into Music->Radio and the radio function is now operational there really isn't a big change over MCE seek/tune preset and a radio visualisation thing in the background that's about it.

Hardware compatibility (Hauppage / nVidia / etc).

Most MCE hardware is supported out of the box I believe though not all features may be exposed the the stock driver. Updated graphics card drivers are also now available which may improve the UI rendering speed or bug fixes over the stock display drivers.

Any changes to functionality, e.g. support for multiple sources/EPGs

The UI has been changed for the worse in my view as an example the my videos folder is now harder to get though as it use category's and you sort of slide though the choices. So to get to my videos you go up to picture and videos hit enter now cycle past pictures & play all to get to the videos folder.

The displaying of thumbnails again has been changed no longer is it in a sort of folder view but sort of a mosaic look when you cycle though them the selection sort of jumps a bit out, it is not an improvement over the old way but neither is it a step back.

The Recorded TV section is improved over the previous one as you now get thumbnails for your shows along with the meta data instead of just an entry.

Once major feature is that Vista MCE plugin's will now be able to use the native UI to render with instead of HTML this means seamless integration with plugin's in the future. My Movies is what I'm most interested in but unfortunately the author has said they wont be switching until the majority are running Vista MCE as he cannot afford to maintain two versions.

Extender support is way slicker than XP MCE, when you power on an extender and icon will pop up in the systray or if you are in MCE it will tell you extender detected. After that all you do is enter in the code and it syncs to the device.

Boot speed Vista MCE is a lot faster in getting to the desktop and MCE than XP MCE ever was though this is somewhat dependant on hardware.

Programs & games can now be launched from within Vista MCE instead of as hack through XP MCE so that is a nice enough feature if you use your HTPC for other tasks.

The ability to burn content from your library straight to DVD/CD is useful.

Microsoft bundle in a MPEG-2 decoder no need to get one just for the sake of it any more unless it does better quality.

Picture quality I'd have to say even with the stock MS decoder was pretty good.

No support for multiple EPG's I'm afraid still one only.

The other big item but means nothing to us is CableCard support that is basically the North American equivalent of the smart cards we use in our cable and satellite set top boxes but mandated to be industry wide compatible. Essentially this would permit a direct feed from an STB into the PC with a cable card tuner however the whole thing is an utter total mess crippled by DRM and the cable companies fighting it by tooth & nail. Somehow I do not expect things to be any different if the same thing is tried here though there is no industry standard everyone has their own encryption system so they would have to make a deal with UPC or Sky to get something like that running.

DVB-T support is present but no DVB-C, DVB-S, DVB-S2 support however these are supposedly on the books for the next service update.

So summing up some improvements over XP MCE & nothings changed in other areas. Worth going out & getting right now if you are a current XP MCE owner ? not really unless you are affected by some long standing MCE bug, but the OEM copies are possibly worth it given the low price and you don't change the hardware in a HTPC too often.

Krusty_Clown

Thanks 8T8 that's a very helpful summation.. (Saves me going out and doing all the research )...

I had read Thurrott's 'review', and found that it didn't answer my questions, and seemed too sickly sweet, with too many uses of words like 'stellar', 'powerful', 'all-new', and that's just the first paragraph.

I think I might hold off for a while before upgrading..

Media Portal seems to be going from strength to strength, so I might give it another whirl (previous attempts met with mixed levels of success). They have now included support for watching/recording more than one channel (simultaneously) from a single DVB card! (As long as the channels are on the same transponder). Not sure if this will work with the FTA tests taking place at the moment, but I'll give it a go!

RuggieBear

nice one 8T8.

Bit worried about the activation issues as i like to tinker all the time with my pc:(

8T8

RuggieBear wrote:

nice one 8T8.

Bit worried about the activation issues as i like to tinker all the time with my pc:(

With the OEM version you can change the supporting hardware as much as you want as long as you don't change the motherboard which will mean getting on the phone to MS to re-activate.

If you do change the hardware including motherboard regularly hold off for another few months so things get more polished and save up for the retail version of Home Premium which allows changing of the motherboard & re-activating without having to call MS.

RuggieBear

in theory i'm getting a full retail copy of home premium (went to that launch event in Croker)

Krusty_Clown

Just another quick question: Given the new audio stack and the reported issues, does anyone use S/PDIF passthrough to a digital receiver? Is it working just as it did in MCE 2005? Does it work ok with protected content too?

Still toying with the idea of an upgrade, if only to put an end to my 2005 woes..
Oh, and I presume all of the Irish EPG info is present and correct?

unklerosco

Is it worth getting for a pc thats ONLY used for media center... I'm upgrading my HTPC at the mo, new mobo cpu etc. so now would be a good time to change to vista, but is it worth it if all i'll be using is the MCE side of it??

SoundWave

i was also thinking of upgrading to vista... i recently bought xp mce and it has the coupon for vista home premium upgrade, i had a quick look and i could only see links for certain hardware vendors to supply the upgrade cd, can i get it direct from microsoft? or am i snookered..

cheers
SW

8T8

Krusty_Clown - the SPDIF pass through is working according to some at least with AC3Filter. I think Vista has it's own built in controls in this area but I do not have a digital sound system with my TV so cannot verify if it works.

As far as my understanding goes DRM content can temporarily disable SPDIF if the DRM content requires it however not all will or do that, it is set by the content creator. If you are not using DRM'd content it has no bearing on your audio/video. Most of the EPG info is present & correct for Chorus at least although they have not yet updated two channels on Chrous, More4 & Film4 which recently became available it still lists ITV3 which More4 replaced.


unklerosco - It's still early days yet & very little is majorly different from XP MCE so I'm not sure, if you are an early adaptor & want to try it out get the OEM 32-bit version as for what your getting in Vista is not worth the full retail price tag as it currently stands.


SoundWave - I don't honestly know, the upgrade coupon was intended for system builders who would then dish out the upgrade when you contact them. Bar contacting MS directly which they will probably say no dice the only thing I can see so far is this MS page which appears to be linked to the coupons.

http://upgradeweb.moduslink.com/office/

Krusty_Clown

Top notch 8T8! Knew I could count on you..
I'm still on the fence...

MartMax

hi lads

just a quick visit on Vista MCE. got the free home premium version, bought a PVR150 and installed a second STB for NTL digital. I haven't got the MCE remote yet.

Vista is quick to install, it has a stock driver for PVR150 and detects the card well. Now the tricky part, I could not complete MCE setup to view my NTL digital which I source in through the composite UNLESS I have a IR remote.

After an hour looking around where to change settings, I still can't find how to get this work. Oh I suppose I must order a MCE remote soon, unless there is anyone who knows how-to.

Mart

8T8

Unfortunately Vista MCE is the same as XP MCE in this area & you need the MCE remote/IR blaster to complete the TV wizard if using a set top box.

No way round it as far as I know but the remote is a good thing to have anyway, Komplett sell the remote & IR blaster. OcUK also sell the remote.

RuggieBear

literally baout to install home premium now. I'll see how it goes.

RuggieBear

seems painless so far. (touch wood)

Krusty_Clown

I went ahead and installed it the week before last..
Sadly, the experience has been a little less than exemplary. I'm glad I went to the trouble of making a backup of the MCE2005 installation. the problem isn't all Microsoft's. Many of the drivers from the peripheral manufacturers just aren't up to scratch. So, if your hardware spec (like mine) is middle of the road, you migth be better off waiting a few months, until things have stabilized a little.

My spec:
P4 3.2Ghz Procesor(runs at 100% soon after launching Media Center)
1GB RAM - Not enough
nVidia Geforce 6200 (fine under MCE2005, a dog under Vista). Very poor driver support from nVidia (poor hardware decoding support)
Hauppage PVR500MCE - Again, fine under 2005, Vista drivers available but weak.
Onboard sound, network, etc.
TV Reception - NTL Analog

I've had to do a huge amount of fiddling and researc to get the system to where it is today. lots of playing with settings in Media player, power options in the control panels, different MPEG2 decoders, nVidia beta drivers, Hauppage beta drivers, BSODs, I'm going to give it another week or two.

There are some things that I like:
1) S3 sleep - worked out of the box extremely well
2) Mini-Guide - is excellent
3) Recorded TV view - Top notch.
4) some bug fixes for 2005 problems (I was experiencing)

Awful:
The menu system! Why didn't they listen?!
Boot speed for me is a lot slower than mce2005, but wakeup from sleep is much quicker.
The hardware requirement (even with everything switched off).

8T8

Yup NVIDIA's drivers are still buggy they have been getting better incrementally with each revision but only by a small amount. My 7300LE is for the most part okay with Media Centre though I have been thinking about getting something with more RAM as the LE has only 64MB or switching to an ATI card. I put in an extra 1GB of RAM in top of 512MB into my notebook running on a Sempron so it has 1400M usable and installed ATI Catalyst 7.2 and fired up media centre and it was smooth as silk at 1280x800 & that's running on an ATI Xpress 200M chip which is bottom of the barrel.

Whatever you do do not force AA on in the NV control panel & run media centre that will bring it too a painful crawl.

If you want to offset the crappyness of NVIDIA's driver but stay with NV get something with a bit more kick like a fanless 7600GS.

Purevideo hasn't been updated to work under Vista so if you are using that then there is a utility here that will allow you to set the preferred decoder like the old Deccheck program under XP MCE (UAC must be disabled for it to work apparently or try running in admin mode).

The boot speed improvements may take a while to kick in, over time Vista (were talkin weeks) will learn what gets used most & rearrange it's position on the HD, don't be surprised if you see the HD LED going like mad while the system is idle. Also ReadyBoost still helps a bit with 1GB of RAM systems so if you have a 1GB USB stick spare try that out as well.

Krusty_Clown

Unfortunately, I'm limited by space, power and technology, as I'm using a shuttle-like system, with an underpowered power supply, at 8xAGP, so no PCIe, no sizeable cards, etc.

I've used the MPEG switcher, and the purevideo decoder brings the system to its knees, so have gone back to Microsoft's. I'm hoping this situation may improve when nVidia release drivers that will support WMV hardware decoding on the card. By the way, it was disabling HW decoding of WMV that allowed the system to actually view recorded content at a reasonable rate.

Some other tips:
I understand that some of the more conservative power schemes throttle the CPU to approx 50%, so if anyone is suffering from prolonged CPU maxing, it might be worth your while trying to switch to a different power scheme.

Removing Symantec's Antivirus client for Vista helped things (replaced with AVG's free (for non-commercial use) alternative).

I've only 2 memory banks, so it'll have to stay with 1GB for the time being (2 x 1GB being more than I'm willing to invest in this Vista trial at this time!). I've tried various options to get Readyboost working, but haven't succeeded yet..

Tried my iPod shuffle, but contrary to what I've read, I haven't managed to get this supported yet (tried NTFS/Fat32). Tried a 1GB SD card, but my card reader seems to be unsupported (possibly USB 1.0). So, I've ordered a USB 2.0 card reader (for all $4 here, which I'll try with the SD card. Failing that, I've ordered a 1Gb USB memory stick (10 euro here!) for which I've read reports that it works ok. After that, it starts to get expensive. :eek:

8T8

A lit of compatible ReadyBoost devices can be found at this link if that's any help.

That's a bugger with the Purevideo not working properly not terribly surprised given the state of NV's drivers though. I suppose the course of action is to stick it out & hope NV fix the bugs.

One other possibility's but I know this may be way past budget is this AGP X1550 Pro a hard to find card but an X1K none the less which nets you ATI's latest Vista drivers and AVIVO DVD decoder which works in MCE & is on par with Purevideo in picture quality. Power supply requirements are not an issue either.

At the moment I have Cool & Quiet enabled with the balanced scheme and everything is working okay as it should the CPU speeds up on demand though how other CPU's behave is another matter.

Getting rid of Symantec was a very good idea awful software use Avast Home Edition (free) or AVG and that's all you need.

Krusty_Clown

I went with the DaleElec 1GB Blue 'lozenge', which someone had submitted info to say that it was supported. At 10 euro delivered, even if it doesn't work, it's still a mighty handy device for the price.

I'll hold off on updating the graphics card, because if I need to upgrade, I'm better off doing the entire media PC, and getting something newer and quicker, with more space, more power, less noise, and hopefully more Vista.

Another good thing about Vista, is the resource monitor. It's very handy, even if I'm sick of the sight of it now! The event viewer (also sadly a frequented application), has also received a nice makeover.