Windows Media Center Replacement

amallon

Before Wife and kids arrived I had loads of time to be tinkering and getting the perfect Windows media center setup. Media center is dying a death so I'm on the look out for its replacement.


I have 3 TVs with XBOX extenders
I love being able to record shows and watch a bit in the living room and resume the show in bed if I want.
I need to be able to stream my home movies and pics to any TV
I'd like something with Spotify integation & Netflix.
I'd like something with a browser that I can control from the my phone

I was thinking of roku but keeping my Windows Media center PC to record TV. Can I stream PIC & videos from my Media PC to roku?

Whats the best option?

Dravokivich

You might want to give something like MediaBrowser3 a look over. You can keep using the XBOXs as UPnP/DLNA clients to it. Will allow sharing of all media, music/video/pictures.

Dravokivich

Just seen Plex have now released an app for Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

https://plex.tv/xbox

You'll need plexpass to get it at the moment though.

franksm

I am in much the same boat - been an advocate of MCE since XP-MCE came out, have been through all the versions, and was very happy with the Win7 version. I use MCE for live- and recorded-TV via a freesat decoder card.

Last years complete failure of the EPG for three or four weeks over New Year's was very disappointing, but I persevered.

Now, trying to get Netflix to run on Win7 MCE and finding out that it isn't ever going to happen... I am going to look for an MCE alternative. It needs to have a good 10ft interface, good EPG and sit nicely with Netflix. I really do not want to buy a Netflix box, or a Smart TV.

I might give Win8 a go, I have heard that Netflix works okay in MCE there, but I have a feeling that MCE and myself are about to part ways...

amallon

I thought there wasn't any improvements in WMC on Win8?

My wish list of features include:
Live TV
Pause Rewind Live TV
PVR - Record shows, series etc.
Decent EPG
Playback live TV
Watch part of a show in the living room, resume it from where we left off in bed
Play picture slide shows direct from home server
Stream home movies from home server
Play music from home server
Or play music from Spotify
Netflix
Web browser on TV
All on one box please

FrankGrimes

I'm in a similar situation. Used Media Center for about 9 years but started getting problems with it not switching channel correctly sporadically, but enough to make it not possible to rely on it. Think it might be a TV tuner problem but given the time I invested in researching these things over the years, I decided not to this time as the product is not being further supported.

So I went and bought an Amiko Alien 2 Triple Plus box that does the basics well - it plays and records live UK Freeview and Irish Saorview channels which is all I need. Not mad on the interface though.

I end up switching back to the HTPC (which now has the TV tuner disconnected) and using it for Netflix, whenever I need VPN to access players, and for browsing my media - ripped movies, recorded TV, music, photos stored on both the HTPC and my Windows Home Server.

Switching between the boxes is a pain so I'd like to bring it all together in one interface - I wonder would HDMI Passthrough on an Xbox One give some/all of that functionality (Not really familiar with passthrough but interested to find out).

I've heard of different media systems like XBMC, Media Portal, Plex etc. and the interfaces look great but I couldn't figure out if there was a pain-in-the-ass-free way to setup live broadcast TV playing and recording via TV tuner card (which is by far my top priority). Would definitely be open to exploring options to bring my TV tuner card back to life, or to be able to use the Amiko box for the TV capturing but not having to interface directly with that device.

Hoping there are others in similar boats that might have some good solutions to share! Have a baby coming in a couple of months so my time window for getting all this sorted once and for all is rapidly diminishing!

FrankGrimes

More research has shown my problem was down to a known issue with BlackGold tv tuner cards having seemingly random and intermittent problems with channel dropouts on Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 - unresolved and unlikely to be resolved.

So it looks like my hardware works, just not with Windows Media Center so if I could get an alternative media center system working, I could relegate the Amiko to the spare room and get back to having a media center HTPC that does everything in one interface.

I know of Media Portal but don't know if BlackGold cards work well with it, or how long it takes to setup broadcast live TV (I'm pretty short on time at the moment)? Also, does XBMC have a straightforward way to get live broadcast TV via TV tuners working?

Any pointers on alternatives would be much appreciated as it might help restore my HTPC to being a do-all box that is sorely missed at the moment!

NakQuada

FrankGrimes wrote: »

More research has shown my problem was down to a known issue with BlackGold tv tuner cards having seemingly random and intermittent problems with channel dropouts on Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 - unresolved and unlikely to be resolved.

So it looks like my hardware works, just not with Windows Media Center so if I could get an alternative media center system working, I could relegate the Amiko to the spare room and get back to having a media center HTPC that does everything in one interface.

I know of Media Portal but don't know if BlackGold cards work well with it, or how long it takes to setup broadcast live TV (I'm pretty short on time at the moment)? Also, does XBMC have a straightforward way to get live broadcast TV via TV tuners working?

Any pointers on alternatives would be much appreciated as it might help restore my HTPC to being a do-all box that is sorely missed at the moment!

Yes, XBMC has an integrated TV Guide addon that works as a PVR client and anything else really. Never used it much myself but I do recall something about having to manually download XMLTV listings for the EPG etc!

Dravokivich

NakQuada wrote: »

Yes, XBMC has an integrated TV Guide addon that works as a PVR client and anything else really. Never used it much myself but I do recall something about having to manually download XMLTV listings for the EPG etc!

You can link it through a repository, but the labels for the channels in the EPG need to match whatever source you use for the PVR.

FrankGrimes

Thanks. I researched Media Portal and got it setup over the weekend - went for it over XMBC as it has a native TV Server backend so was one less thing to learn about and it was relatively straightforward to get it all setup.

All I can say is the interface, particularly for the Moving Pictures movie plugin and My TV Series plugin, is absolutely stunning and Media Portal has come a long, long way.

Not sure what extra I'd be getting with XBMC over Media Portal but in the absence of a compelling answer to that, I'm more than happy with Media Portal, it's been absolutely beautiful to use so far.

NakQuada

I remember I used MediaPortal for a long long time. Then I used XBMC and never went back!

FrankGrimes

When I looked at Media Portal a good few years ago it didn't look great. I was blown away with how slick it all is now, both in visuals and functionality.

If XBMC is a step up again, I'd be interested, but would be good to know what kind of things does XBMC have that are advantages over the current Media Portal version?

If it's a quick job to get XBMC setup now that I have Media Portal TV Server working well in the back-end, I'd go for it and just stop using the Media Portal front-end, but I'm guessing it'll take several hours to get working so would prefer to know what the incremental benefits would be before investing the time, am well curious though!