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Thread: Replace MCE for Vista?

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    Replace MCE for Vista?

    Hi all,

    I have a laptop which currently has Windows Media Center Edition. Along with the laptop I was given a free upgrade disc for Vista Home Premium. I got this laptop back in Feb 07 and at that time, all i heard about Vista was bad, so i kept the disc and never installed it.

    Anyway here we are, 1.5 years later and im wondering if its fine for me to upgrade? I heard SP1 has ironed out a huge amount of release bugs?

    The laptop is Core2Duo 1.8ghz with 2GB RAM. I do like to run quite a few apps at one time eg, iTunes + Firefox + MSNs + Antivirus + MS Word etc. I've already got times where the laptop does stall and can become a bit slow even though the memory usage never exceeds 1GB so I presume the CPU isnt as good as it use to be .

    I heard two tales about vista: a) Its a resource hog, b) It manages its resources significantly better than XP? Which is true? Basically I would like to do the upgrade but if it will have a noticable impact on performance then I'll have to leave it.

    With Vista will I have any/many driver related problems? Also would it be worth getting the 64bit? I remember not many bothering with 64bit OS's because of software compatibility, is that still the case?

    Really hope you guys can help me out

  2. #2
    Splash
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    Re: Replace MCE for Vista?

    The general opinion is that if you want to use it for media centre capabilities you're best sticking with 32 bit, as a raft of codecs sulk or just plain refuse to load under a 64 bit OS.

    From a personal point of view I much prefer the Vista MCE frontend, but your mileage may vary. As for the "release bugs" most vendors have released drivers that work fine now, but you're probably best checking that with the vendor of your laptop.

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    SiM
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    Re: Replace MCE for Vista?

    I have never had a problem with any form of media in Vista x64...

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    Re: Replace MCE for Vista?

    Agent and a few others did, big style.

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    Re: Replace MCE for Vista?

    Hmm... how long ago was that? I have only used SP1... maybe the problems have been sorted?

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    Re: Replace MCE for Vista?

    Quote Originally Posted by SiM View Post
    Hmm... how long ago was that? I have only used SP1... maybe the problems have been sorted?
    Try installing DivX. XviD. Pretty much any VfW codec to be honest. Not the actual codecs (they usually just about work, for decoding anyway), but the config GUIs and things like that.

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    Re: Replace MCE for Vista?

    What is wrong with ffdshow or Video lan? There is not need to install garbage like divx... I have had no problem configuring h.264 and xvid decoding

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    Re: Replace MCE for Vista?

    Quote Originally Posted by SiM View Post
    Hmm... how long ago was that? I have only used SP1... maybe the problems have been sorted?
    It was post SP1

    http://forums.hexus.net/operating-sy...ml#post1470229

    In short:

    1) Purevideo issues
    2) No easy way to change the decoder that MCE is using without messing about in the registry. This is a good thread with many issues highlighted - applications like this do not work in 64bit.
    3) Changing tuner priority needs manual registry changes - and I never got it to work anyway
    4) No 64Bit version of almost all encoders
    5) By default Vista uses the 32Bit version of Windows Media Player (which is used to manage the music collection in MCE to a level that can't be done within the default MCE interface). Sometimes issues would happen with the music database (lost covers, missing data, weird ordering) if you used the 32Bit version of WMP to change your music collection. You would need to force the 64Bit version via this method. Accidentally loading the wrong version could lead to a lot of frustration.
    I think this has been sorted via a hotfix now though.
    6) No way to fall back to 32bit MCE on 64bit Vista like you can with WMP (seriously stupid idea)


    I have not tried 64bit MCE since the new TV pack, so I don't know ow many of these have been corrected / updated. Not all of them are Vista64 MCE issues to be fair but the end result is the same.
    Last edited by Agent; 18-09-2008 at 08:35 PM. Reason: typos
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

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    Re: Replace MCE for Vista?

    Quote Originally Posted by SiM View Post
    What is wrong with ffdshow or Video lan? There is not need to install garbage like divx... I have had no problem configuring h.264 and xvid decoding
    Why would you want videoLan on it?
    The entire point of MCE is to have a front end away from stand alone applications like that

    Is your h.264 hardware decoding, or software?
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

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    Re: Replace MCE for Vista?

    Ahhh, I was talking about media in x64... don't use MCE

    h.264 is hardware decoded if it is compatible or software decoded otherwise using the inbuilt codec in mpc-hc

    Anyway forget about MCE, use mediaportal - that will almost certainly work

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    Re: Replace MCE for Vista?

    Well the title kinda gave it away

    As much as I like open source software, last time I looked at MediaPortal it was ugly, buggy and ugly
    So ugly I needed to say it twice.
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

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    Re: Replace MCE for Vista?

    If you use a nice skin then it is far from ugly... Its not very buggy at the moment, its on the RC stage of development.

    In the title, he mentions moving away from MCE to Vista

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    Re: Replace MCE for Vista?

    MediaPortal still won't do fullscreen 1920x1200 for me without crashing, regardless of the OS (XP Pro, XP MCE 2005 or Vista x64). It's been like that since at least a year back, and on a multitude of hardware.

    Keep wanting to try it, wanting more flexibility from MCE, yet it's never been possible, let alone feasible.

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    Re: Replace MCE for Vista?

    To be honest, I dont use the Media Center aspect of the OS! I only use it, as I would XP. Although I do watch quite a few videos, i run them all off media player.

    So going off SiM, if I were also be running Vista x64, I would be fine?

    Still undecided if I even want to upgrade to Vista, letalone chosen between 32 or 64 versions lol.

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    Re: Replace MCE for Vista?

    Yup you will be fine. VLC or media player classic + ffdshow play everything perfect

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    Re: Replace MCE for Vista?

    yeah, if you're not using MCE its unlikely you'll have any problems

    The good thing is that you can still run 32bit apps, so the codecs for them still work
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

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