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Thread: Thoughts on Media Center?

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    Post Thoughts on Media Center?

    Am considering installing this (had an OEM which came with PC) but not sure if it's worth it or I should sell it on. I read recently that you can connect online and watch certain TV stations - is that right?

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    The late but legendary peterb - Onward and Upward peterb's Avatar
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    mutantbass head Lee H's Avatar
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    With Media Centre 2005 there is quite a lot to do online at the moment

    Theres Music Brigade - Where you get access to loads of music video's and various styles of music

    As for watching TV, this really requires a TV card within the PC and then all the scheduling and recording features would be handed by MCE rather than a 3rd party software solution usually supplied by the manufacturer.

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    The key is to find a TV card that has MCE in the name or description. This should insure it will work with Windows MCE. Both Scan and Komplett do them, being Hexus favourites they are a good start.

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    mutantbass head Lee H's Avatar
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    Good Advice Gun, I would suggest a DVB-T card as this gives you all the digital freeview channels providing the signals in your area.

    Theres only 1 thing I can complain about with MCE2005 and that is the lack of driver updates from people like Nvidia. They release updates all the time for 2000/XP yet the MCE2005 drivers have not been updated since the 27th September 2005.

    Microsoft are trying to make MCE more popular, yet this I feel is shooting them in the foot.

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    Banhammer in peace PeterB kalniel's Avatar
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    Agreed. I was actually considering MCE until I saw how poor the support was.

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    i didn't realise this - graphics drivers and the like need specific MCE ones rather than XP?

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    Quote Originally Posted by kipdakip
    i didn't realise this - graphics drivers and the like need specific MCE ones rather than XP?
    Oh yes, special graphics card drivers are only the start. You also need a TV card with BDA drivers and a DVD decoder (WinDVD/PowerDVD/nVidia PureVideo). Then there's the remote to consider as well.

    MCE2k5 is not even slightly user friendly to build/configure and if you get it wrong with your drivers then God help you! A DVD decoder crash can screw things up to the point where a reinstall of the whole system is the easiest option.

    As you can tell, I've had issues with it. Rather annoyingly, it's still better than MythTV

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    Well, this has completely changed my perspective then. Does anyone favour alternatives? Am going to buy a DVB-T card soon

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    Quote Originally Posted by kipdakip
    Well, this has completely changed my perspective then. Does anyone favour alternatives? Am going to buy a DVB-T card soon
    Don't get me wrong, when it works it's great. It's just that when it goes wrong it tends to do so fairly spectacularly and configuring it in the first place can be a pig.

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    Although I don't know the store at all, this shop seems to specialise in parts that will work. No guarantee, but maybe along the right path. http://shop.mediacomputers.co.uk/acatalog/index.html

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    mutantbass head Lee H's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kipdakip
    Well, this has completely changed my perspective then. Does anyone favour alternatives? Am going to buy a DVB-T card soon
    Windows MCE just needs a little more "care" when setting up and once it runs, it runs SUPERBLY and I cannot vision going back to a bog-standard XP Pro install.

    Issue's I found so far include the following ;

    1) MCE asks for DISC2 to be inserted on install but the file it wants is on DISC1 ( or Vice-Versa... its been over 12 months since I installed last )

    2) Drivers that support MCE seem to be updated slowly - The only company so far I know thats bucking this trend is hauppauge and this link Here is a sticky on the hauppauge forums with guides, hints and latest builds. If any Nvidia rep/Worker is reading this you need to hang your head in shame as MCE is now starting to gain popularity as xbox360 owners are using it as a media streaming source. Get your drivers updated pronto please.

    3) recording can take quite a lot of space - Hence my silly amount of space available on my system in the specs over there. Saying that in the config system you can change the quality to suit what you require and adjusting this changes the amount of space used in total.

    4) Get the Remote - MCE is much more functional with the remote than without it. You will love using the remote and after a while you will no know how you used windows to watch films etc without it.

    5) Visit MCE specialised website such as http://www.thegreenbutton.com for addons such as MCE alarm clock ( heh... better to wake up to some decent music than beep-beep-beep ) and th MCE weather plugin

    6) Have a quick read of the MCE "expert" page. I've learnt a few tricks from reading how to do various stuff from HDTV to playing the recorded shows on various portable players. Link for the expert page is Here

    Other than that I love media Centre and with vista having the same capabilities as MCE its going to be 1 hell of a OS

    If you need any more information - feel free to holler and I'll rack my brain to see if I know the answer.
    Last edited by Lee H; 08-12-2005 at 11:48 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Lee @ SCAN
    1) MCE asks for DISC2 to be inserted on install but the file it wants is on DISC1 ( or Vice-Versa... its been over 12 months since I installed last )
    It's XP SP2 it asks for when it means disk 1.

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    Quote Originally Posted by GDVS
    As you can tell, I've had issues with it. Rather annoyingly, it's still better than MythTV
    I've not used MCE2005, but I've got an absolute bodge of a mythbox downstairs. What am I missing, precisely?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Byatt
    I've not used MCE2005, but I've got an absolute bodge of a mythbox downstairs. What am I missing, precisely?
    When MCE2K5 plays nicely it's a pleasure to use, the interface is so much more polished than that of Myth. It's also more tolerant of reception dropouts, Myth tends to crash when it gets corrupted data but MCE handles it more gracefully.

    The guide data is also far superior to that available through either the XML feeds Myth uses or the DVB-T OTA guide.

    Myth has some advantages, the ability to have 3 different DVB tuners running together and no weird driver requirements are quite high on my list but the other advantages of MCE outweigh this.

    It really is worth buying the MCE remote as well, it's quite nice to use (once you get the hang of the channel/volume buttons (you need to be quite firm with them)) and of course there's the MCE keyboard now which I may have to indulge in at some point.

    I'm a long time Linux user who only turned to Windows when I started playing games again. I've used MythTV and VDR with quite some success but MCE is so much more polished and the interfacae is so much nicer that find you don't miss the extra features (damn, that's twice in one day I've praised MS. I must be ill!).

    One thing I will say though is don't throw it on a random hodgepodge of hardware unless you're willing to accept some setup pain. It's still fussy about hardware and drivers to the point where it can drive you to distraction getting it working.

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    Squeeler Vini's Avatar
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    im having problems with video out put in MCE05, ive got the Nova-T (MCE compat version) but whilst i get fluent sound, i get no video.

    and when i do the tests, there is no video, just a lot of screen flicker.

    is it a codec jobby?

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