Vista MCE versus Frontrow

tubos

I'm deciding whether to get a mc mini to use as a media center or build my own a run Vista MCE. Has anybody any experience with both Frontrow and Vista MCE? Which is better?

Also, when it comes to streaming my media to other rooms and using media extenders, are there more options available if I'm using Vista. Is the Mac limited to only a few devices such as AppleTV?

Any thoughts on the Mac versus PC as a media center would be appreciated

SouperComputer

To be pedantic, there is no vs. Frontrow and MCE are very different products. Also it doesnt have to be Apple or PC, it can be both too.

It all depends on exactly what you want and how you want it? Do you want to watch TV around the home?

Basically frontrow is a frontend (hence the name) however I would not consider it a media centre.

tubos

Thanks SouperComputer, I'm a noob to all this, I want to place a computer in my sitting room from which I can play my library of music/video etc to begin with and then stream to other places around the house. Currently all my media is stored on an old Mac G4 and hope to use this for storing all my media in future, nothing else, probable add another hard disk to it. Anyway, it's all just an idea at the moment, I'll have to splash out some cash on a new machine so not sure whether to go pc or mac.

Calibos

At the moment we have all our content (3tb) on 2 Nas devices hooked up to the switch and router. Accessable on 2 PC's and most importantly 4 original Xboxes modded to run Xbox Media Center (XBMC) which are hooked up to the 3 plasmas and an old CRT 28incher. Theres a TV and a projector without an Xbox at the moment because they are so hard to come by second hand these days.

The main point is though is that due to the scarcity of xboxes and the fact that they are too old and slow to play hiDef, well I have been back researching on the XBMC websites. And guess what. XBMC has been ported to Linux/Windows and OSX! THey are still in Beta but we are only a few months away from 100% complete, stable alpha releases (End of Summer probably.

If you google OSXBMC you will see that XBMC is way ahead of MCE and frontrow with regard to features.

So personally, I'll will be picking up a half dozen mini's. Well, I'll be ordering them. The rest of the family will be paying for their own!!

So each display will have access to all content, have the power to play all content, at the same time (unlike streaming to an extender), in effect mean each display has a PC (no more fighting over PC access). Just waiting for the next refresh of the mini hardware with the bluray drives, then each display has a bluray. (800 DVD's already ripped to servers but small Bluray collection thus far and huge file sizes mean ripping to servers is out of the question for a while yet)

Anyone know how much of a discount you would get ordering 6 mac mini's?

So if it was me, I would go mac mini but with OSXBMC running instead of MCE or Frontrow.

SouperComputer

Well MCE would be a waste if you are just watching stored media. XBMC and Frontrow are better suited for that.

If you google OSXBMC you will see that XBMC is way ahead of MCE and frontrow with regard to features.

XBMC is great and all but I beg to differ, its the same as frontrow in the sense that it is not a PVR, more features than frontrow admitedly (not hard ahah). MCE is a PVR, huge difference. Of course XMBC can play recorded TV, but thats not what I'm getting at.

Some people still watch TV

You'd be luck to get a free mousemat from apple if you were to buy 6 mini's. Youi might have more success with a retail reseller, but the margins are extremely tight on Apple products.

J-blk

I actually use a Mac Mini (1.66Ghz Intel Core Duo) as my MCE machine and it dual boots both Vista and Mac OS X Tiger.

As to which is better, I tend to use Mac OS X more because I do still encounter BSODs and other instabilities in Vista that drive me nuts, but it depends what you want to do really. At the end of the day, Vista's MCE works best for TV (especially if you have NTL Digital or Sky - there's no way to control the set top box on the Mac side, to my knowledge, whereas in MCE you can with the IR blaster).

On the other hand, I like the Mac OS and Front Row more for everything else and it generally is more stable and better performing (MCE slows down quite a bit when trying to browse folders with tons of videos on a network share, though you can kinda get around things like that).

As for Apple TV, if you had Tiger on the Mini (kinda hard these days, I know), you could actually replace Front Row with ATV4Mac which is the software Apple TV now uses anyway (it doesn't work on Leopard yet, cause the Apple TV core OS is 10.4.x based):

http://www.macgeekblog.com/blog/archive/2008/03/25/atv4mac-1-2-available.html

However, you may have problems playing some avi files with that, as opposed to straight up Front Row (you can remove it though it takes some work).

At the end of the day, what you choose to use it up to you, but a Mac Mini can perfectly well run Vista MCE anyway (and mine isn't even the current gen), so why not get that and have the best of both worlds? You could dual boot for awhile until you decide what you want to stick with. If you do go for Vista though on the Mini, make sure you max the RAM to 2GB - mine sits at about 45% memory use when idle in Vista...

tubos

Some great info there, thanks all!