REVIEW

Media Center - Vista

Written by Ashleigh Charlesworth
Published January 03, 2007
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Media Center allows for all the, now standard, digital TV additions, these include live pause and timeshifting, as well as series recordings and searching for actor/genre/program. It also includes a decent DVD player.

This being Windows however, we can take things a lot further.

Add-ons

Media Center is a very extensible system in Vista. Almost all of the old Media Center 2005 hosted HTML Plugins that I have tried work great with Vista. However Vista's version of Media Center adds the new 'Windows Media Center Presentation Layer Applications', this is new in that as well as hosted HTML applications you can now host .NET Framework 3.0 XAML applications. This allows developers to add new animation and effects to their applications.

MyMovies allows you to copy your DVDs from disk onto your hard disk, and will download details of the film from IMDB.

WebGuide 4 allows you to connect to your PC over the internet to change the recording schedule of your PC.

MobileWares has some nice .NET 3.0 applications that are worthy of a look, both Big Screen Headlines and Big Screen Photos are both great applications, and worthy of installation on any Media Center.

DVRMSToolbox is a great little application that will allow you to transcode recorded TV into WMV as well as remove or allow you to skip adverts.

MCEBrowser is a nice little wrapper for IE to allow you to surf the web from your sofa via a nice 10ft interface.

TVTonic is another great little application that also supports the new flashy Vista interface, and allows you to subscribe to media feeds. It then downloads them in the background so you can watch them at a later date. Great stuff.

Conclusion

Vista Media Center has moved on significantly from XP MCE 2005. Performance in general is improved, as is the reliability of the system as a whole, the new XAML based applications are a much needed improvement from the hosted HTML of 2005 as is the XBox 360 integration. 

Vista MCE has a few other new tricks under its bonnet: Microsoft have now integrated a decent MPEG2 codec so third party DVD decoders are no longer needed, as is the DVD burning software. This allows the user to make use of some of the most important parts of the MCE experience. You can now backup your favorite TV or video to a DVD disk and watch it back at any point, on any DVD player.

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Ashleigh currently writes for Naked Cleaner and F1 Blog. His interest lie in Technology (of all forms) and engineering. Day to day he does network security for living (yes I AM that nerdy).
Keep reading for information and comments on this article, and add some feedback of your own!
Media Center - Vista
Published: January 03, 2007
Type: Review
Section: Sci/Tech
Filed Under: Sci/Tech: Computers, Sci/Tech: Internet, Sci/Tech: Personal Tech, Sci/Tech: Software
Writer: Ashleigh Charlesworth
Ashleigh Charlesworth's BC Writer page
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Comments

#1 — January 10, 2007 @ 06:42AM — Ash

im running the vista rtm release of media center and tempted to get a tv card but heard microsoft has stopped this functionality. is this just in the test version of vista or all versions?

#2 — January 10, 2007 @ 08:49AM — Ashleigh [URL]

Vista MCE only exists in certain releases of the priduct. however TV coverage has been in all versions of media center ever released, and it will not be removed at any point soon.

Have a look in the sci-tech section as I have reviewed two such TV cards recently.

thanks

Ashleigh

#3 — January 21, 2007 @ 05:36AM — Simon

Hey Ashleigh, I found your review whilst looking for a USB DVB-T dual tuner that would work with my Mac Mini running MCE (using Bootcamp). I wanted to hedge my bets by finding a model that would support both OSX and MCE and it looks like the Cinergy DT USB XS Diversity may be the ticket.

Are you still happy with MCE and your Diversity? I really want a solution that replaces my ailing Freeview HD recorder (Digifusion) but I want to make sure it's girlfriend proof! I'm not saying she's stupid :), we're just lazy and need something thats completely usable from the sofa.

#4 — January 21, 2007 @ 08:30AM — Ashleigh [URL]

The Cinnergy is still working great, in fact it's my primary reciever.

Vista MCE is certainly better than 2005MCE used to be, how do I know? The wife disliked 2005, and loves Vista, go figure?

The only thing to 'worry' about using the Mac Mini is it's lack of memory (get a ready boostable memory stick) and it's lack of HDD space. But it's a grat form factor for an MCE PC.

#5 — February 7, 2007 @ 13:57PM — Rick

Can I have more than one "frontend" with the media center in vista? Reason being I want to record the shows in one room and be able to watch other things in the other rooms of my house as well. I'm currently using MythTV with 1 backend and 2 frontends.

#6 — February 16, 2007 @ 17:28PM — Marcos Scriven

Hi

I have Vista Home Premium, and the same USB TV tuner, however, I see two devices, both of the same name. I think it's the sound capture part of the device that isn'T working (got that little exclamation mark)

Anyway, I tried downloading the latest drivers from the Terratec website, and it say there is a Hotfix you need from Microsoft, but rather stupidly, not which one!

Any ideas pls?

#7 — February 17, 2007 @ 18:46PM — Ashleigh [URL]

Frontends can be any media extender (like a 360).

Strange about the exclamation? I never had any issues.

Try re-installing the drivers for the exclamation part. To do this

Launch Device Manager
Double Click the errored device
Click Reinstall drivers
Click Browse for device drivers
Locate the downloaded drivers using the browser
If you get a pop up about security select the ignore/allow option
click through

That should do it.....

Ashleigh

#8 — September 21, 2007 @ 12:10PM — rock

hey guys..... i need some help.... i m currently using vista..... but i prefer xp media center to vista.... now da problem is i m not able to install xp mediacenter..... even after i format da os drive... i m not able to install xp media center... it does not auto run.... can any1 pls help me out....

#9 — December 3, 2007 @ 12:52PM — ParaDoXaLL

hey rock delete your partition whit fdisk and rebuild a new one just format is not enough.

#10 — February 26, 2008 @ 18:31PM — PaulH

Hi. I to have built my self a media center using windows Vista home premium. I'm having major problems with it though, I can't get any of my AVI files to be recognised and run on it. I've tried to look online for solutions and installed all the recomended codec packs, and still nothing. Is it something to do with it being 64 bit Vista? I have another pc running 32 bit Vista and that has no problems at all. Please give me an idea on what to do.
Thank you.

#11 — April 11, 2008 @ 16:24PM — Åke

Media center whats junc. I tried to use this what Ms say is advantage hi end solution. I think it's a junk like all vista crap

#12 — April 20, 2008 @ 04:42AM — Jonas

Regarding using Vista MCE as a frontend. I think this is an interesting topic.
It seems like this is "work in progress". There is two solotions in vista. Media Center extenders and media library sharing in WMP. The problem is that Vista MCE cannot consume shared media library. Neither can MCE be an extender for another MCE.
Of course it is possible to use folder sharing, but thats no fun.
Conclusion: There is no real frontend/backend solution in present version. Correct?

#13 — April 30, 2008 @ 21:53PM — Rich
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