Windows 7 Beta - Anyone testing/using? Any Media Center Improvements?

eddiem74

Just wondering if any of you are playing around or participating in the Windows 7 Beta testing (offically starting Jan 9th), and if you are is there any new/nice improvements in Media Center ?

wasim21k

AFAIK its in vm only, can you give link of ms site where i can download iso for clean installation?

Seapoint

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx

Biro

Yep, installed and tested. Media Centre looks a little different. TV Pack with HD support out of the box. (No messing with hard to find updates or dll's!)
Runs smoothly and fairly quickly. Looks good so far.

eddiem74

Biro wrote: »

Yep, installed and tested. Media Centre looks a little different. TV Pack with HD support out of the box. (No messing with hard to find updates or dll's!)
Runs smoothly and fairly quickly. Looks good so far.

Any bluray playback / support ?

fanny_mae

Biro wrote: »

Yep, installed and tested. Media Centre looks a little different. TV Pack with HD support out of the box. (No messing with hard to find updates or dll's!)
Runs smoothly and fairly quickly. Looks good so far.

Support for TV cards? I have a Pinnacle 7010ix.

And do you know if HD can be streamed to an xbox? I've heard mixed reviews of this. I'm not sure if it's a limit on the network bandwidth or a problem with Windows 7.

Biro

fanny_mae wrote: »

Support for TV cards? I have a Pinnacle 7010ix.

And do you know if HD can be streamed to an xbox? I've heard mixed reviews of this. I'm not sure if it's a limit on the network bandwidth or a problem with Windows 7.

Yep, it worked with my 7010ix straight away. Also streamed HD to the Xbox, something Vista won't do even after updating TV pack and dll file.
So I'm buying a copy when it becomes available!

Biro

eddiem74 wrote: »

Any bluray playback / support ?

No, I don't think so. All references made to anything like that are to CD or DVD. Nothing states blu-ray anywhere, which I'm sure it would if it were supported. However I can check and confirm this when I borrow a blu-ray film off a mate, I've none of my own!
In any case, even if it does play it I can't see blu-ray being able to be streamed to the 360.

Biro

fanny_mae wrote: »

Support for TV cards? I have a Pinnacle 7010ix.

And do you know if HD can be streamed to an xbox? I've heard mixed reviews of this. I'm not sure if it's a limit on the network bandwidth or a problem with Windows 7.

Worth noting though that I only tried it with a Sat signal, not analog or digital terrestrial.
(Actually, is digital terrestrial available as test still in the greater Dublin area?)

fanny_mae

Biro wrote: »

Worth noting though that I only tried it with a Sat signal, not analog or digital terrestrial.
(Actually, is digital terrestrial available as test still in the greater Dublin area?)

I have the card working with Vista and TV Pack 2008 ... both DVB-S and Analogue.

AFAIK, digital is still only available from Treerock in Dublin. Sept 09 is when a nation wide roll out is supposed to happen.

Biro

fanny_mae wrote: »

I have the card working with Vista and TV Pack 2008 ... both DVB-S and Analogue.

AFAIK, digital is still only available from Treerock in Dublin. Sept 09 is when a nation wide roll out is supposed to happen.

Good stuff, more to look forward to so!

Himselfe

fanny_mae wrote: »

I have the card working with Vista and TV Pack 2008 ... both DVB-S and Analogue.

AFAIK, digital is still only available from Treerock in Dublin. Sept 09 is when a nation wide roll out is supposed to happen.

Did you get it to tune in and display BBCHD on DVB-S? Also, has anyone gotten it to tune in the MPEG4 Digital Terrestrial Trial transmissions (DVB-T)? None of this is possible on Vista without major heartache...

mjsmyth

I installed it on Tuesday night, took a little under 3 hours for an upgrade from Vista.

Rebooted, logged in and yeap, there it was, Windows 7 in all its glory.

Strange thing, it would see my wireless network, it just would not / could not connect to it.

I spent 10 minutes trying to find out why, said feck it and put Vista back on.

Never got to try the Media Center aspect

mj

8kvscdpglqnyr4

Himselfe wrote: »

Did you get it to tune in and display BBCHD on DVB-S?

I have BBC HD working on my DVB-S card with no issues. It was simple to setup, just follow the instructions on the 1st post here:
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/312334.aspx
I didn't have to read past the first post.
I also have Luxe HD over DVB-S.

I don't live in a part of the country where I can receive DVB-T so I'm stuck with analogue for now.

rlogue

I installed Windows 7 on my PC last night. Media Center would not recognise my Hauppauge Nova-S2 card no matter how many times I scanned the machine for new hardware. The Device Manager could find it but since Media Center could not find the tuner I deleted Windows 7 off my PC.

Good riddance!

Himselfe

Kenia Cuddly Bird wrote: »

I have BBC HD working on my DVB-S card with no issues. It was simple to setup, just follow the instructions on the 1st post here:
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/312334.aspx
I didn't have to read past the first post.
I also have Luxe HD over DVB-S.

I don't live in a part of the country where I can receive DVB-T so I'm stuck with analogue for now.

I might give it a go so. BBC HD will be worth the extra effort on its own IMO!

8kvscdpglqnyr4

Himselfe wrote: »

I might give it a go so. BBC HD will be worth the extra effort on its with tv pack installed.

Just to confirm I'm using Vista-32 and not windows 7 and I have HD working no problem.

Himselfe

Kenia Cuddly Bird wrote: »

Just to confirm I'm using Vista-32 and not windows 7 and I have HD working no problem.

Oh, ok. Thanks for confirming that anyway. You obviously tried the dll editing option from The Green Button. Couldn't get it to work myself. Might give it a go again.

Anyone gotten the HD chnnels using Media Centre in Windows 7?

eddiem74

Posts over on AvForums indicate BBC HD works straight out of the box so to speak once you have the relevant TV card.

FrankGrimes

I'm running Vista on my HTPC in the living room connected to my TV via HDMI and I have a Hauppage PVR 500 MCE tuner connected to 2 NTL set-top boxes via s-video.

Here's my CPU, RAM, and Mobo spec:
RAM: Corsair TWIN2X 6400 DDR2, 2048MB CL5
Mobo: ABIT Fatal1ty F-I90HD, ATI RX1250, HDMI,m-ATX, DDR2, Socket-775, GbLAN, PCI-Ex16
CPUL Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 2GHz Socket LGA775, 2MB, BOXED w/fan

Would it be worthwhile with this setup installing Win 7 beta as my primary OS on this machine at this point? I'm eager to try out Win 7 as I think it looks great and could do with any performance improvement it might offer.

Or would it only be wise to install on a partition to play around with at this point?

spartacus93

FrankGrimes wrote: »

I'm running Vista on my HTPC in the living room connected to my TV via HDMI and I have a Hauppage PVR 500 MCE tuner connected to 2 NTL set-top boxes via s-video.

Here's my CPU, RAM, and Mobo spec:
RAM: Corsair TWIN2X 6400 DDR2, 2048MB CL5
Mobo: ABIT Fatal1ty F-I90HD, ATI RX1250, HDMI,m-ATX, DDR2, Socket-775, GbLAN, PCI-Ex16
CPUL Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 2GHz Socket LGA775, 2MB, BOXED w/fan

Would it be worthwhile with this setup installing Win 7 beta as my primary OS on this machine at this point? I'm eager to try out Win 7 as I think it looks great and could do with any performance improvement it might offer.

Or would it only be wise to install on a partition to play around with at this point?

Because it's still a beta you should probably put it on a partition, however, it's the most stable beta i've ever used. No problems at all with it, no crashes, nothing. All my software installed fine, and no problems recognising devices.

I'd say back up anything important and go for it. I prefer it to vista, good few nice touches in it and it seems a bit quicker. Boot times are much better imo

FrankGrimes

So, I jumped the gun a bit and installed Win 7 Beta as an upgrade on my HTPC - worst case I can rollback to Vista, right?

I've loved it so far but the only downside is my Hauppage PVR 500 MCE doesn't seem to work. It picks them up in Device Manager and attempts to update the drivers say 'latest driver already installed' but MCE gives an error and won't setup the tuners due to hardware issues.

Anyone know if it will be possible to get a driver to sort this out or another workaround? Really don't want to have to rollback if at all possible.

Gholimoli

quick question for thoes who have BBC HD with any OS...
what provider are you getting BBC hd from?ie Sky ,NTL etc

also does any one know if DVB-C is supported in Windows 7?
Thanks

mrbongo

Frank, I have the same card, Win TV PVR-500 MCE, works fine in Windows 7, you just need to install the drivers from Hauppauge's website. Download the first yoke on this page:

http://hauppauge.com/site/support/support_mce.html

Unzip it and run ''Setup.exe" and you should be golden.

mukki

rlogue wrote: »

I installed Windows 7 on my PC last night. Media Center would not recognise my Hauppauge Nova-S2 card no matter how many times I scanned the machine for new hardware. The Device Manager could find it but since Media Center could not find the tuner I deleted Windows 7 off my PC.

Good riddance!

well thats me out, i got a vista tv pack dual nova-s2 setup

FrankGrimes

mrbongo wrote: »

Frank, I have the same card, Win TV PVR-500 MCE, works fine in Windows 7, you just need to install the drivers from Hauppauge's website. Download the first yoke on this page:

http://hauppauge.com/site/support/support_mce.html

Unzip it and run ''Setup.exe" and you should be golden.

Thanks for the tip but I tried it and during Setup it just says 'no components need to be installed for your product, please click cancel.'

So it seems it has the latest drivers installed but though the tuner worked in Vista it won't work in Win 7....do you have the PVR 500 MCE working in Win 7?

FrankGrimes

I uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers and it now worked....even the second tuner worked during the installation process right up to getting the IR emitter working but stopped at that stage (2nd emitter wouldn't do anything)....so there's hope that with a bit of work that'll bring both tuners back to life without the need to uninstall the beta.

I do get a weird behaviour though: I have it setup to use one tuner only and when I go to change channel when watching live TV, it goes into a screen saying something along the lines of 'all tuners in use, please select program to stop viewing' but then it won't do anything when I select the current program. I end up having to hit the Stop button and go back to the guide and get it to change channels which is far from ideal.

Could this be a bug or is it more likely to be a problem with my tuner software?