Vista Media Center

[jayrbrown77]

If anybody is interested. there is a youTube video of a walthrough of Vista Media Center features.

http://www.pvrwire.com/2006/09/14/vi...ter-in-action/

[ozfiles]

Thanks, that was a nice little insight into what to expect from vista media centre.
I think he made it look easier than what it would be really like.
I will be sticking with sagetv.

[cenwesi]

Oh boy does SageTV have some competition now. I wonder if that media center works with dual tuner now

[that_kid]

Originally Posted by ozfiles

I think he made it look easier than what it would be really like.

No it really is that easy, the one thing that keep me from using VMCE is the limited number of tuners that you can have.

[jmiddleton]

Vista media center will support 2 ATSC and 2 NTSC tuners (or 2 PAL and 2 DVB-T in other parts of the world). Is there really enough worth watching to need more? If you answer yes, you'll be pleased to know that this is an artificial limit. XP MCE users have discovered registry hacks to get around it and Vista hacks will likely be available soon if they aren't out already.

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by jmiddleton

Vista media center will support 2 ATSC and 2 NTSC tuners (or 2 PAL and 2 DVB-T in other parts of the world). Is there really enough worth watching to need more?

Yes.

Thursdays is generally my worst night.

At 7pm I generally record My Name is Earl & The Office (NBC), Ugly Betty (for my wife) (ABC), Til Death (FOX) and a spanish soap opera for my inlaws.

With 4 tuners, that is 'enough' but in the event something else is also on, I have no available tuners. Most of the shows on cable repeat frequently enough so I can record later airings, but I record a lot of kids programming for my son. It would not be unheard of for me to attempt to record 5 or 6 things at once.

I currently have 4 SD Tuners and 2 HD Tuners.
As soon as I get cable installed (2 weeks hopefully) I'll have at least 6 SD and 2 HD Tuners. I'll probably limit HD at two tuners due to disk space. I also plan to record everything in SD and the important shows in SD & HD. I'll likely never watch Lost or 24 in SD again, but I want to have the option just in case something happens to the HD recordings.

So with that in mind, Thursdays now require 6 tuners for me (4 SD) and 2 channels will also get HD treatment (NBC for sure).

Yeah, I watch too much TV.

[elaw]

I don't think there's ever been much question that MCE is easier to configure, and in some ways use, than Sage. IMHO Sage's strong points have always been flexibility and its ability to be customized.

Also unless I missed something, I don't think that video showed the message box that appears when you try to play a file, that says "Sorry you can't do that because some Hollywood bigwig doesn't want you to"

[ybrew]

Back on topic...

I'm not expecting to leave sage for vista. I distribute TV to 5 rooms from a central closet now with Sage. I use media extenders in 3 rooms, a pc client in 1 and a combo pc client/media extender in the media room.

using an Xbox 360 as an extender for media center, is it a full functioning client like the media MVPs? Can you access program guides, watch live tv, etc? Or can you only watch recorded programs?

More just curious than anything.

[jayrbrown77]

Agree, I'll continue to use SageTV as well.

Vista MCE looks very nice, but I'm sure it is a system hog.

Does MCE allow media extenders? I thought I read something about it, but on the other hand...

[kltye]

I've used Vista MCE at a friend's place together with a 360 as an extender. His machine is a Athlon64 3200+, 1GB RAM, GeForce 5200 GPU. He doesn't have any HD tuners, but as far as SD is concerned, the system is very smooth. Using the 360 as an extender is a very pleasant experience especially with the Xbox remote. The extenders are full-fledged clients that can do anything the host can do, except major configuration, like tuner setup, etc.

I don't know where all this Vista DRM sentiment is coming from, but my buddy and I have been using Vista for about 7 months now on a daily basis, and never once have we encountered DRM issues. MCE hasn't given any more playback errors compared to Sage, and runs VERY quickly as well with thumbnail generation and the fantastic visual effects.

I'm still sticking to Sage for two reasons: My viewing database (Wiz.bin) has history that goes back for several years, and that MCE doesn't allow for PC-based extenders. I already have a great Shuttle box that does hardware HD decoding very nicely - I'm not about to throw that out.

MCE has come a long way and is now a fully polished product, more so than (dare I say) Sage. Of course, that's my opinion, but this is coming from someone who has used Sage since its 2.x days all the way to v6.

[AngelofDeth]

I thought MCE wouldn't play back certain content on extenders that had a flag set, such as HBO? Or maybe its not an issue any more, and I don't think that was even an HD thing...

[jquinlan]

Originally Posted by jayrbrown77

Does MCE allow media extenders?

The XBOXB 360 is the prefered and only extender that is Vista MCE compatable, Microsoft says. I dont know if the other extenders Microsoft has sold will work with Vista. That would suck for the ones that bought them to find out they will not work when you upgrade.

[SHS]

Vista DRM sentiment is coming from

1: Let see file you record are part DRM and are wapper in to ms-dvr file.
2: It depend on the channel you record from and weather it on that channel usely channel like HBO, Showtime which used (CGMS-A) Content Generation Management System for Analog for now, but you can bet in next few years lot more channel will have that enable.
3: Still dosen't support ture configure Multi-Source input.
4: Still can't customize configure Audio/Video recording setting.
5: No Network Encoders.
6: No Client Software.
7: No Channel TV Logo.
OH I'm sure I could think of more
Don't get me wrong it nice and all

[kpsmith]

But it sure looks pretty.

If I could get a pretty little wrapper like that with Sage I wouldn't even think about it. That plus, its so easy to be lazy and just pick up a preconfigured media center box. Instead I have to do things the hard way and custom build a Sage box

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by kpsmith

But it sure looks pretty.

If I could get a pretty little wrapper like that with Sage I wouldn't even think about it. That plus, its so easy to be lazy and just pick up a preconfigured media center box. Instead I have to do things the hard way and custom build a Sage box

Yeah, but then you'll be using Windbloze media center with all it's EXTREME limitations. That plus every time your machine boots up the Windows DRM will change your startup sound to "All your media is belong to us! BWAAAAHHHAAAHHAAA!!!!!!"

[Narflex]

And don't forget that XBOX 360 will NOT output HD CableCard content from a Vista PC unless you happen to have one of the newer ones with a DVI output (if they're even available yet). It's not CableLabs compliant to have CableCard content output over component.

Not that Microsoft ever mentions that when claiming XBOX 360 owners will have access to HD cable content through CableCard....but is that a surprise? Sorry...not current owners....hey....this reminds me of Play4Sure and Zune.

And of course none of the extenders from XP MCE will work with Vista MCE if you didn't know that either. (you'll need a V2 media extender....none of which are available yet)

Just some things to think about...

[jayrbrown77]

It's nice to know that MCE has it's share of issues as well. Below is a link to a forum where people state some of their problems.

http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/160201.aspx

[avonnied]

Originally Posted by jmiddleton

Vista media center will support 2 ATSC and 2 NTSC tuners (or 2 PAL and 2 DVB-T in other parts of the world). Is there really enough worth watching to need more? If you answer yes, you'll be pleased to know that this is an artificial limit. XP MCE users have discovered registry hacks to get around it and Vista hacks will likely be available soon if they aren't out already.

didn't read the whole thread but this warrants a comment..

/ranton
i just started reinstalling windowsXP for SageTV from my Vista Ultimate (got it yesterday from newegg)..

One of my pet peves is when a major software release has the same limitations that they have in previous versions of software being perpetuated to the newest version..

The issue in question is that MCE does not support digital subchannels, MCE in Vista !STILL! uses your analogue card's EPG to perpetuate the DVB-T channels and will NOT setup sub channels (eg. it will do 7-1 but not 7-2, 7-3 etc..). even adding the channels manually it just duplicates the EPG data and there is ZERO way to even hack the correct EGP data onto the manually added subchannels..

i'm sure blue-ray and HD-DVD support will be nice, but when you can't even do the simple things...

i can't tell you how irritated i am to find out this limitation in Vista MCE and even worse is that this is how MCE2005 was (i am an MCE noob if you couldn't tell)..

the other stuff i could deal with (like Vista not working with purevideo, right now expect to peg 60-80% CPU on a 3500 machine just watching regular SD)..

for something that MS was touting as being the "center of multimedia and entertainment" just fell way short..

not to mention vista MCE (MCE2005 may have been like this too) is just full of bloated adware (not malicious).. the entire online section of VistaMCE is nothing but pay for services, i was hoping for some nice features but instead its just a bunch of bloated crap (if you can't tell by now, i'm fairly irritated at vista ATM)..

hopefully it will mature (the digital subchannels is a must for me to go back since the -2 channels here are the HD, the -1 are the SD)
/rantoff

[heffe2001]

I've got purevideo installed on my Vista Ultimate machine, seems to work ok on it. As for the online stuff, the majority of what's available on my system seem to be free stuff. XM isn't, some of the full movie sites aren't but the music videos (MTV & VH1), as well as a host of others are free.

I'll not be switching to Vista MCE any time soon, especially with the anticipated pricepoint of Sage's HD boxes (I'll not be buying xbox 360's for all my TV's and cablecard's restrictions are just a tad much for me also. Now that being said, Sage really needs to look at how fluid the UI is on MCE. If my Sage UI looked as good as as the MCE UI on Vista, I'd bet their market share would go up quite a bit . (I do use SageMC, but it's a pale imitation compared to the real MCE UI, with no offense to the designers). Also the sheer amount of plugins for MCE, and their ease of installtion is just astounding.

Every time I play with MCE on my laptop, I always end up wishing my Sage looked the same. But the amount of tuners your limited to, and the only extenders being the 360's is a definite deal killer.

Originally Posted by avonnied

didn't read the whole thread but this warrants a comment..

/ranton
i just started reinstalling windowsXP for SageTV from my Vista Ultimate (got it yesterday from newegg)..

One of my pet peves is when a major software release has the same limitations that they have in previous versions of software being perpetuated to the newest version..

The issue in question is that MCE does not support digital subchannels, MCE in Vista !STILL! uses your analogue card's EPG to perpetuate the DVB-T channels and will NOT setup sub channels (eg. it will do 7-1 but not 7-2, 7-3 etc..). even adding the channels manually it just duplicates the EPG data and there is ZERO way to even hack the correct EGP data onto the manually added subchannels..

i'm sure blue-ray and HD-DVD support will be nice, but when you can't even do the simple things...

i can't tell you how irritated i am to find out this limitation in Vista MCE and even worse is that this is how MCE2005 was (i am an MCE noob if you couldn't tell)..

the other stuff i could deal with (like Vista not working with purevideo, right now expect to peg 60-80% CPU on a 3500 machine just watching regular SD)..

for something that MS was touting as being the "center of multimedia and entertainment" just fell way short..

not to mention vista MCE (MCE2005 may have been like this too) is just full of bloated adware (not malicious).. the entire online section of VistaMCE is nothing but pay for services, i was hoping for some nice features but instead its just a bunch of bloated crap (if you can't tell by now, i'm fairly irritated at vista ATM)..

hopefully it will mature (the digital subchannels is a must for me to go back since the -2 channels here are the HD, the -1 are the SD)
/rantoff

[that_kid]

Originally Posted by jmiddleton

Vista media center will support 2 ATSC and 2 NTSC tuners (or 2 PAL and 2 DVB-T in other parts of the world). Is there really enough worth watching to need more? If you answer yes, you'll be pleased to know that this is an artificial limit. XP MCE users have discovered registry hacks to get around it and Vista hacks will likely be available soon if they aren't out already.

Currently I have 10 tuners, 4 OTA HD, 2 QAM (HD Homerun and i'm about to get another one) and 4 SD from my Directv STB's. It's not about one person watching things all the time but rather a household. I currently have 2 full clients and 5 mvps in my house. Everyone can watch whatever they want and I don't have to worry about running out of tuners when a show needs to record. Yes you can play in registry sandbox with MCE to add more tuners but you still can only have 1 guide, I have QAM, Directv and OTA HD all with different guides which Sage handles great. Plus I still have more room to grow, Vista MCE can only support 8 extenders. Well I'm pretty close to that already and I still have more places to put TV's.