Is Windows Media Center Alive? - Page 4

Best thing to do is avoid those region locked discs altogether and just stick with the files themselves.

- 2B

bit hard not too with some bd's for the simple fact some a hard cided to the actual disc..


while multiregion may be usable in a dvd context from a bd player perspective, from bd perspective ssoft codes will play, though learnt the hard way with devil may cry, that was hard code..


it's hard to know when ordering titles from the states to which are hard coded for region playback and which are not hard coded..


the bigger issue will be faced once you start to mount dvd and bd's on hdd, sometimes copy software has issues in regards to piracy prevention..

In that case, sometimes it's just better to get it from a digital source in the first place to avoid that kind of stuff. You save fuel and you save having to buy a BlueRay drive too.

- 2B

I can hardly go out for a drive. considering region a/1 is an import job for me at the best of times, it is hard to know what titles are hard coded to the actual disc, until i play 1 disc of a particular title it's hard say if it has region lock or not..


not every region a i own has hard codes....

the for backup options to t a server the drive itself will need to be made universal in regards to regioning prior to copy process..

also note I'm in Australia not the US, when it comes to media streaming or for backup big issues ensue due to primary firmware road blocks it needs removing just to play the the media nevermind actually copying it....

3rd party programs like anydvd work though when you look past 1,000 disc's it isn't a practical solution when you have multi region material..

I learnt this 10 years ago...

if you want to copy another regions bd material start looking for firmware cracks....

digital copy as far as i'm aware of only pertains to sourcing a copy of the movie from an online source, not sure if digital copy pertains to porting from media to server storage on home network that can be accessed online from another computer... as that would be broad and extream use of the digital copy agreement and may border being illegal use of it..

I do agree with your saying. Tried to use it with my TV but its not as good as few of the alternatives like VLC.

Is this the sign of opening up WMC related things to outside developers or a sign of impending doom for WMC?
http://www.missingremote.com/news/2012-06-20/microsoft-drops-certification-tv-tuner-and-wmc-remote-control-and-receiver-hardware

The only way to get around the region codes is use Anydvd, and remove that region code. It won't play back in Sony 7000ES, but it will play back in a Pioneer BD recorder on an HTPC or via Hard drive with J River. I know one guy that does this alot with his 100TB server, and been doing it for 4 years. He is still doing it, but he uses My Movies to playback the content. He has 4 rackmount servers with 24 drives each.

I use WMC or Live TV and XBMC for videos and everything else. I tried Media Browser but that didn't work. For one it is really laggy and WMC isn't good for mkv videos. It requires me to install too many things to get some basic functions like ff and rewind in mkv that crashes WMC at times. I would not attempt Live TV in XBMC bt for everything else it works perfect.

You need a card to run it in J river, but it does have television, and is a US based company. Unlike XBMC. I have tried XBMC for over a year, and gave up on it. It is like a highschool science project that never ends. It probably take them to December to get out of Beta with the audio. J River works perfectly for me. No issues with it. it has 30 day trial, but only $50 after that.

This is not relevant for this post Im sure. But I am a DIY guy and I was wondering If anyone knew any good books for advice for Display devices and audio devices?

J river does not work with cable cards and I imo the program really lacking plus they charge for updates. Why pay when WMC works perfect for tv. I have never had an issue with Xbmc. It is a great product and amazing it is all free compared to Media browser that charges for some lame themes.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

Here is the list of the supported devices. http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=33741.0 There is some interest in developing the cable card access, but Cable Labs has to approve it. J river has been developiing this issue, but they do the legal way. There is a thread on Ceton Tuner card. I never had to pay for an update yet. Although, I started at version 17. If you go in the forums, then the latest update is posted there. Also, J River will tell you when an update is available. SACD was a free update.
I don't mind paying for a program that works. Realize that you are paying for their income. So do you work for free? I doubt it!

My movies does charge for updates, but a recent update is now MyMovies collection management into MC17 as JRiverSidecar files. http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=72892.0

Updates are free within major versions. When you buy 17.x you get all 17.x updates for free. Often times there are major new features added in the minor releases (like SACD support that you mention). When they release 18.x there will be a fee to upgrade if you need/want the new features. If you are price conscious, they give pretty deep discounts on the upgrade during the beta cycle and from time to time. You also don't have to be on the 'one prior' to get the upgrade pricing so you can skip whole major releases if they are not important to you.

Yes, it is great discount. Only ($18.98) to upgrade. J river is going to version 18. Upgrade cost was rather inexpensive, and J River is being ported to Mac OS X by the end of the year. (audio only). I don't mind to pay for great software. Here is the post on it. http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=73514.0 I used to upgrade PowerDVD and it was a full price cost each time. Actually, I still have less money in 2 years of J River than one copy of PowerDVD. Once J river is full ported to Mac OS X, it will be much better for people.
Edited by Nitro67 - 7/26/12 at 9:02pm

Windows Media Center is already dead in my Windows 8...

Care to elaborate?

from my understanding from win8 onwards the mediacentre app is an add-on which you need to pay for, so you may have limited or no use of the app until you buy a license for if, much like what they with office preinstalled on laptops put a trial version on and you pay a full licensing fee so you can unlock the full version option of the software.

from what I hear, it's about 20-bucks. Bargain at 5x that IMHO

I use it as my main DVR and use MediaBrowser for mocies (with ArcSoft TMT for Blu-ray ISO's)

Extended support (MS will continue to release security patches) for Windows 7 is currently till 2020. No reason to even rush to Windows 8 for any HTPCs.

Media Center is supposed to be free to those who upgrade to Windows 8 Pro.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Windows-Upgrade-Offer-Windows-8-Upgrade-Brandon-LeBlanc-Media-Center,17051.html

Yes for Extended support. That is if you believe Microsoft. http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?c2=14019&ln=en-us I know that Windows 2k wasn't 10 years. I switch to Mac OS X

I am running a whole house DVR with multiple mini-Itx WMCs on Windows 7. I use Netflix, Hulu, my personal movie library, the Sports aggregator, HDHomerun Prime, Live Premium TV, Blu-ray, etc... I save over $40 a month from Comcast because I own my own equipment and I have a better DVR system than Comcast.

In my opinion WMC is certainly alive and it is the most overlooked Media Center. I have tried other systems XBMC, MythTV, Boxee, Hulu, Plex since 2005 and I have ended up with WMC and I will never go back. I'm no Microsoft fan and this is the one piece of Microsoft software that I am happy with.

I've done a ton of research on Media Centers and implemented a bunch on Ubuntu, Mac and Windows. I'm a huge XBMC fan but was mystified as to why the XBMC live television support was sub par. In 2011 I moved to WMC after I got past the denial that it was built by Microsoft. The DVRs instantly received instance wife acceptance and I haven't looked back since.

Sorry for bringing back this thread, but can anyone confirm if PowerDVD11 works in WMC on Windows 8? Cyberlink's site says that 12 is the only version that is supported, but I really don't want to pay $50 to upgrade for no reason.

Also, to get your free key to add WMC, go here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/feature-packs

It took about a day and a half for my key to get emailed to me, but it is free until the end of January for Windows 8 Pro users. After that it will be $9.99.

Microsoft has always had a hard time with WMC carefully walking the line of making it a useful product and not making it anger the movie studios and such. The real problem now is that microsoft has a conflict of interest. Why sell you WMC? They want to sell you xbox, and little apps. MS has many great and under rated products like one note, mesh, but they never know how to advertise these product and alert people to them, then because of this failure they say well that was not a popular product and keep flip flopping on what its use / purpose is, and how much they are willing to put into it.

The only use I have for Media Center is to launch MyMovies. With no CableCARD support from cable providers in Canada, the one really good feature native to Media Center (TV) is useless. I find MyMovies to be vastly superior to the built in movie library. If MyMovies came out with a standalone browser and player then I'd have no use for Media Canter.

I tried adding my dvr from wmc to xbmc and it doesn't work.. How do you convert it?