Windows Media Centre or Media Portal with XP or Vista?

mikelata

Windows Media Centre or Media Portal with XP or Vista? hi,

I am trying to decide what OS and media centre software to use for my media centre.

The idea is just using my PC as a media centre. No gaming or standard PC applications on it. No need of unnecessary processes

So, I want the PC to boot as quick as possible and I would like the media center to go straight to the media centre software in the startup.

The questions are:
What OS woulld be better for that? XP or VISTA?
What media center software would be faster? MediaPortal or MCE?
Any extra consideratation to take for the iMon IR?

Thanks!!!

Username!

Definately XP MCE and using a bit of Google knowledge, you'll be able to disable any unneccesary services.

eddiem74

Probably depends a bit also on how much tweaking you would like to do or not.

A while back I built my first HTPC and am using Vista Media Center for Music and DVD's. A nice interface, but limited, good enough for me though.

mediacentre.ie

one big problem with MCE is no HD playback.

mikelata

thanks for your replies!

does Media portal play HD content?

Is there any difference in responsiveness between MCE and Media Portal? For example, when changing TV channels.
Does 1 launch the software faster than the other?

mediacentre.ie

yes it plays all HD content. I wouldn't think there is much difference in responce.

what TV card do you use? is it sat or cable etc.

mikelata

I have a Hauppage 1110. IT is still not fully configured due to problems with the PCI riser card I have to use due to space limitations in the case I bought.

I have a free view satellite dish and also an NTL box. So, the idea is:

• to connect the digital freview TV to TV IN in the card
• to connect the NTL output to the TV card through S VIDEO.

What do you think about this setup? Will the NTL signal be recorded well?

No HD TV in here. However, the motherboard has an HDMI output. Thus, I could play HD videos.

Cheers!

DamoKen

An alternative to Media Portal you could take a look at is XBMC -> http://xbmc.org/. It's an open source (and free) application originally designed for use on a modified xbox. That's where I use it myself and have to say it's excellent. They've more recently expanded it to include support for Windows and Linux, haven't tried either but might be worth a look.

Lot of forum support as well as open source scripts/apps addons.

mediacentre.ie

that doesn't seem to have TV support. I have a DVB-S2 card for freesat and I can watch BBC HD and ITV HD. I also use a technotrend C-1501 for NTL. media portal's TV server is brilliant. you can stream to any PC or laptop on you network.

mikelata

thaks for the suggestion.

Does anybody know if these media centre applications play FLAC audio files?

mediacentre.ie

I know mediaportal does. not sure about MCE

DamoKen

mediacentre.ie wrote: »

that doesn't seem to have TV support. I have a DVB-S2 card for freesat and I can watch BBC HD and ITV HD. I also use a technotrend C-1501 for NTL. media portal's TV server is brilliant. you can stream to any PC or laptop on you network.

hi mediacentre, you're right. at the moment as far as I know there is no support for tv cards (maybe it is in the pipeline on the Win/Linux version?). As I just use it for streaming I've never had that requirement so haven't looked into it.
You can however add video streams, that is any video/tv streamed on the web can be watched through it. Not sure about recording though.

@mikelata FLAC is supported. Have yet to come across a codec I can't play on it

mikelata

hi mediacentre,
HD in free sat? I did not even know that was possible! I guess you need a card that supports free sat HD. Is that the reason why you have 2 cards? One for the free sat and the other for NTL?
My idea was using just one for both.

By the way, how did you connect your NTL box to the TV card? SVIDEO? Composite Video? or do you use an specific DVB C card? Can you schedule your TV recordings if you use a standard video connector such as SVIDEO?

Using media portal as a TV server sounds brilliant. Just one question: What will be the advantage of using a TV server as opposed to just using a software that plays the file directly from the network?

mediacentre.ie

well any software DVB-S card will decode BBCHD and ITVHD. The DVB-C card doesn't connect to the STB. It connect directly to the cable input from the wall. There are both digital.

I think the setup you where looking at is passing though the output of both STB's into one analogue card. This works fine but there is a loss in quality and it is very complex to configure the PC to change the channel on both STB's.

mediaportal doesn't stream media files. just TV. It can play back files over a network like you said but if you have two cards you can watch one channel on the server and another on the client. It works like sky+ as well if you want to record while watching a different program

dmck

vmc will do HD content with the "TV Pack" update and a hacked dll file.

mikelata

good to know dmck. Apparently, you can also install a plugin to allow MCE to play FLAC files, which is one of my big requirements.

I installed mediaPortal and I thought it takes ages to launch the application. Is it that always the case?

Another thing, is it possible to install another music brosher with more functionalities in MCE or media portal? They look quite basic to me. Something like MEdiaMonkey or Itunes type would be great!

Cheers

mikelata

hi again,

I have used VISTA for 2 weeks and the booting time went from 30s to 80 s in that space of time...

I am using windows media centre because it is much faster than media portal to boot, which takes literally ages...

has any one happily switched from VISTA to XP MCE ?