News - Windows Media Center TV Pack gets Freeview certification

[HEXUS]

Freeview certification for Microsoft's controversial TV Pack paves the way for Freeview-branded PCs in the UK.

Read more.

[DeSean]

Boooo

I'm sick of this crap. My Vista "Ultimate" Media Center is completely fooked. I sense a complete format coming on, with a complicated and dubious torrented TV pack to install afterwards....

/sob

[TheAnimus]

ok.....

so you're complaing that your install is 'fooked', and the solution is to obtain a questionable copy of some software, that will of been modified directly against what the developers planned........ And you expect stability.

[Firejack]

I'm losing hope fast in Vista Media Center. Microsoft would have that all important Vista "killer app" - for home users at least - if they could sort out the problems. Freeview support is great and appreciated. But what happened to the promised HD support (that we need for Freesat) here in Europe? This seems to of been excluded in the much hyped TV Pack.

Microsoft is their own worst enemy too. I installed my copy of Vista64 Home Premium on my current media server running WinXP Pro and Media Portal RC2 (nice program but still quite buggy) only to find I went backwards. There is a massive lack of codecs with 64 bit support and because Vista Media Center is a 64 bit native program on Vista64 it can barely play any media.

I also found Vista Home Premium didn't have the Remote Desktop server enabled. Meaning I was unable to connect to my Media Server and manage it over my LAN like I've always done.
Sure once setup you can use the excellent Webguide plugin but users are already reporting the TV pack breaks this and all the other great user plugins.

After trying SageTV, Vista Media Center and Media Portal on Windows I'm about to give up and go back to MythTV on Linux. Sure its a pain having to dual boot most of my machines. I will no doubt end up troubleshooting obscure hardware and software problems to. But I'm doing that on Windows with limited success and I'm having to pay for the licences on each machine I want to watch TV on.

MythTV just works and is reliable and that is all I want at the moment.

[s_kinton]

Microsoft don't seem to care who uses the TV Pack going from whats been said over at The Green Button (now a Microsoft owned website). Whether or not the pack will be released to the masses is yet to be seen...there's plenty of rumours as per usual.

My Vista MCE HTPC now has red button functionality, but still no HD which is pretty poor after this amount of time. The Pack adds some useful extra functionality and fixes a few problems. However, its does mean a few plug-ins don't work as the MCE version numbers changes