Is Windows Media Center Alive? - Page 3

Hi Assassin is that media browser or somethig else that's doing all the meta data?

Regards

Mark

Take Mark's advice...both are good enough

I love WMC as well. I use it exclusively for DVR and live tv functions. It works fantastic. In fact, it's the ONLY thing keeping me on Windows. I desperately want to drop windows, but XBMC and all the other stuff I've tried is far and away worse for what I want. I do hate that it puts it in a proprietary format, but I've found that this program works great for ripping to mpg.

http://mctvconverter.vivolum.net/con...ome/index.html

+1

Windows Media center might be the only reason we have faithful site like ThePirateBay with their providers working around the clock to rip those HDTV episodes.

- 2B

Yes. From the main WMC screen you'll see "Power DVD 11" as an option along with like movies, music, and whatever the other items in the list are.

What it does is launches Power DVD 11 in the theater mode, which looks exactly like WMC, and when you're done with it and click back, it goes back to WMC. It all feels like it's integrated, and I thought it was up until this one time when the computer was processing something and the transition was a little slower and I noticed what was happening.

What ATI card are you working with? I can only confirm first hand that a 5870 would do the trick, but I can't imagine why any others wouldn't. I'm fairly certain any ATI card with HDMI out and is HDCP certified will allow HD audio to be bitstreamed. In Power DVD's options, you just go to audio, select HDMI, and select bitstream hd audio to receiver (or something like that.)

It is my opinion that microsoft suffers from conflict of interest. It seems to me that W7MC has lost functionality since vista. I have seen the same trend in XBOX controller drivers. I think MS just wants to push the xbox and it has created a conflict of interest that is causing the PC to suffer. If the lose the PC market eventually to google I will not be surprised and this will be part of it. Sure you could blame this on third party vendors, such as netflix which to my knowledge still does not offter 5.1 on any PC interface, or hulu or anyone else, but at the end of the day it is MS that needs to step up and encourage developers to use thier product. it seemed they were doing a better job before W7MC. Nothing stops them from writing a plugin which automatically does this on its own either IMO.

Look at what google is doing with chrome, so far as I have seen it ships with Java and Flash so you do not need to update those. They just make it easier on the consumer to get up and running. As long as W7MC has heavily lacking in codec support and even blu ray support how can it topple a simple console like the PS3 for all by the most tenacious of users?

Is there any viable alternative to WMC out there? What I'm hoping for is for MS to make "Live TV" a pinned app in Windows 8 and let us use remote controls to navigate the start screen.

the biggest issus the widget support give xbmc and win7mc and vista mc are all different interface clients and it isn't standardized and plugin support is next to nonexistant..

until ms fixes this issue I doubt we'll ever see a standard format for mc, thus we are left using mythtv as a server component and may be mc as a client..

Yes, I would like to know as well. I'm more than willing to have WMC as my main interface, but with so many flaws reported and posted in this thread, I'm having second thoughts (just completed HTPC) any insight would be appreciated. *crosses fingers*

I guess my point was that WMC lacks a lot of functionality and that causes me to go to other players for some things. But I still think it's about the best thing around. I just wish they would get ahead of the game and start doing some real creative stuff like ripping or downloads and storage or playing BD - like someone said before - and devote some time and energy to making it SOTA - because right now that spot is wide open.

They do support CD ripping. I think the only reason DVD/BD ripping isn't supported is because it's illegal in the U.S..

I think they are ignoring WMC because they want everyone to use an Xbox+Kinect in the living room.

Maybe MS will open-source WMC so that the enthusiast community can take over development.

Wow, so the copyright trolls/lobbyists managed to ram that through also?

- 2B

It's been that way since the DMCA passed in 1998. You can make a backup copy of media you own, but you can't break encryption.

Im running a media center pc with 2x ceton cards with 2 mcards from verizon. I use mymovies.dk plugin for film playback.

I am just setting up my 1st HTPC and am shocked by the lack of plug ins too. I recently subscribed to Pandora. For $30 a year, commercial free music streaming. It would be great if there was a plug-in for it in WMC.

the irony is to copy it you have to break the encryption, kind of a double standard...

the way i look at until they can work a way to produce a faultles dvd or blueray there will always a way to copy the disc and to burn it...

I ain't pissing money buying 3-4 copies just to get 1 disc that has no faults..

it's easier to copy the disc and have no faults...


piracy and antipiracy laws aren't going to stop people from copying a disc for personal use.

personally if you're setup a server for dvd/bd rips if you plan to have wifi on the network make sure your not using standard network encryption make sure nothing can hack into it... make sure it's something the gov can't hack..

Meh, whatever. Screw them - My movie library has been "green" since 2010 (no optical media whatsoever).

- 2B

Over all very informative and full of knowledge especially the newbie like me
Keep posting i shall be happy to learn more from your end with these Posts.

despite it's lack of functionality when it comes to video formats, I still think WMC has about the best audio quality out there. It does things that I can't get VLC to do in a million years - but I tend to use VLC more because it plays more formats.

may be someone will make a vlc plugin for wmc..

who knows..

myself I would say if I find something within firmware conversions I think I will wait to see what can be seen, before I look into building a server system again..
for media storage..

MS just announced that MC will not be included with Windows 8, but will be an app available for purchase as an add-on.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5755/m...oduct-editions

For purchase? That's kind of stupid. I mean, I don't think it should've been included with all the versions of W7 (I liked the idea of "Media Center Edition" Windows), but as an "addon" for purchase, that's just stupid.

- 2B

Meh, it's rumored to be $15, which isn't too much. This way MS can get some real usage numbers and deliver updates outside of the OS release schedule.

Still, the start screen is so nice for a 10-foot UI that I hope they just pull the Live TV and Recorded TV "apps" out of Media Center and make sure the remote is supported.

No, you need to get J River media Center. Recommend software on Hdtracks.com. Works great for video and audio. I tested several different brands of media software, but I need one that was DLNA compliant. I need a good video for DVD's and audio. Simple interface, so I could select the movies via Ipad. http://www.jriver.com/ (30 free day trial) My River works for Ipad or Iphone. Audio quality is much better than XBMC. My video quality is great, but I have the Denon 5308, so it upconverts to 1080p.

Oh, here is how to do rip the 5000 DVD's that you have. Basically, it is CD/DVD robot. http://www.acronova.com/product.php?id=2&n=overview
There is other brands, that will do more discs. Just that this more affordable for me. I just don't want to load all those discs in mine. Acronova has a Pioneer drive, so it works great. The software that I am using with the robot, is from Get Digital Data. http://www.getdigitaldata.com

It's broken again. The correct URL is: http://www.hometoys.com/emagazine/20...ter-alive/1499

I guess I won't be updating to Windows 8 if Media Center is mostly the same anyway and I'd have to pay extra for it... But something tells me there will be added functionality of some kind that would make me consider the upgrade (slicker GUI? amazon instant streaming plugin?)

But overall, I'm more than happy to stick with Windows 7 Media Center, along with the plugins I have installed:

I have found myTV (http://mytv.senseitweb.com/) and My Movies (http://www.mymovies.dk) to be the best for organizing my TV and Movie libraries, respectively. MyTV has a service in that runs in the background so when an RSS feed picks up a new show and puts it in the right directory, the myTV service will look at the filename and scrape metadata for that episode of the show folder its in. Works very smoothly. Wake up the next morning, go to the myTV strip in Media Center, go to the new episodes button, and all the shows your RSS feeds picked up will be ready to watch, already organized with metadata scraped. MyMovies, in my experience, requires more of a hands-on approach to add movies to your collection database, but for what you get out of the plugin, it's not so tedious.

The defunct Advent's Media Center Studio software is no longer distributed by them (their website is gone I think) but you can find downloads for it around the web, though setup can be a pain. Media Center Studio allows you to rename or remove unwanted buttons, or add buttons to different strips or remove them altogether. It also allows customization of the background and fonts in Media Center with theme files that can also be found online.

If you hate how a maximized Media Center window doesn't let the mouse leave the media center window, then a plugin called The Maxifier (http://www.mods.com.au/Maxifier/) to be very useful. This way I can browse the web on the small computer monitor while media center is running full screen on the plasma. This plugin also lets you create keyboard shortcuts for maximizing options, which I was able to tie to my Media Center remote control using EventGhost.

The other plugin that I really appreciate is http://www.mychannellogos.com which adds channel logos to the TV Guide screen and allows some other customization of the guide screen than can help improve its efficiency.

I don't use anything else (Music, Pictures, etc.) in Media Center so I use Advent's Media Center Studio to remove all unwanted strips and buttons in the Media Center start menu, and added the Netflix button to the My Movies strip. So now Media Center starts with a nice customized background, and one strip of buttons for my movie library/netflix, one strip of buttons for my tv library, and one strip of buttons for Live and Recorded TV. Very clean interface.

I suspect I'll be using this combination of plugins for a long, long time until I can no longer use the plugins for whatever reason. I admit that new silk smooth interfaces is tempting. But no other media center alternative has such a simple interface (though I went through great pains to find the plugins and get them working) for keeping track of a tv show library, adding movies and keeping track of a movie collection, and live tv with dvr functions. So for me, I'll probably be using Windows 7 Media Center for a long, long time. I'm hoping in the future something like Kinect or Leap (leapmotion.com) will allow an even more fluid and seamless interface with which to manipulate Media Center. But for now, with my 3 siple strips in the Media Center start menu, using a remote control works well. I see myself using it for quite a long time.

what I'll probably do is buy a not too expensive pad of some type that has Windows 8 on it and play around with it. My Samsung Laptop is about a year old now and my son needs a new one for school so I might let him have the Samsung and go get something else with Windows 8. My other option would be to just do nothing. I mean outside the fact that I'd like to play around with Win 8, I'm basically pretty happy with Win 7. Well actually - I was happy with Vista. It would be more of a slam dunk for me if there were no issues with WM or WMC and the Metro issues wasn't such a controversy.

don't matter what media server you use, the hard facts is this when dealing with multi region material a firmware option will be a requirement, otherwise you'll find your bd/ddrom lockout within 10-12 change limit..

3rd party software solutions only have certain use limits before hardware failure will happen due to region firmware lock imposed on media drives..

Can you clarify that statement?

What is lockout?

region lockout happens when the firmware itself has a change parameter usually 8 though some bd/dvdroms have known to have more change times though once the last change is reached it region locks the dvd/bd player to the last region selected,,,

i'm talking about pc based dvd/bd roms, not standard standalone players...


though unless you find region unlocked firmware the reality is you deal will region locked hardware with 8-12 turns before a perma lock happens..