Using Windows Media Center and SageTV

[Oats]

The UI is nicer, I never really liked all the buttons on the side/top of the screen in the default Sage UI. My main menu is pretty much the same in MCE as I had it setup in Sage. TV Recordings, Imports (TV/Movies), Weather, Settings, Exit are the only things I use so everything else has been removed. MCE theme looks better out of the box. I never really messed with themes for Sage (other than SageMC) and I probably won't for MCE either.

I'm using MediaBrowser and Media Center Master which is very similar to SMW/TVE and BMT. SMW seems to do everything MediaBrowser can except TV management. TVE isn't near as good but it is a fairly new plugin that shows tons of promise and I think will end up being just as good. I like BMT a lot better than MCM so far.

One thing I like about MCE is I installed x64 AC3filter and Haali and everything plays back great so far. In Sage it was more complicated, I had to try several MPEG2 decoders before finding one that worked well, and I had to try a few different combinations of H.264 decoders and mkv/mp4 splitters.

Yesterday I switched all my favorites over to MCE, so I'll get to see how that works out in the next week.

I think if I had a more complicated setup I would probably stick with Sage, but I have one TV with a PC connected so I don't use extenders/clients/servers.

[banjomensch]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Seeing as there are MANY here that use their systems on Win7, both 32-bit AND 64-bit, I'm guessing you've got something else that was causing your problems. Sage never explicitly said it DOES support win7, but the reason they've never explicitly said they DON'T support win7, is because, well.. it DOES work in win7.

When you're right, you're right -- I took out DVBLink and it's now working. Needs some tweaking, but it's there. Thanks for your help!

/john

[mmanville]

Originally Posted by Oats

I think if I had a more complicated setup I would probably stick with Sage, but I have one TV with a PC connected so I don't use extenders/clients/servers.

As someone planning a move the other way, from MCE to Sage, I think that's a good summary. If you hjust have on HTPC device, MC is (after some registry tweaking) a wonderful product.

It's trying to move beyond that where it is breaking down for me.