What is Media Center?
Windows Media Center started life as Windows XP MCE 2004, and this was basically a nice 10ft front end (i.e. not the standard Windows 2ft interface, but specifically designed for much larger displays) to Media Player 8. It had some added functionality over the normal Media Player in that it could show a slide show of pictures, video and be controlled via a TV style remote. Windows XP MCE 2005 and MCE 2005 Rollup 2 added to the features, allowing radio, pictures and stored videos over a network share to the media.
MCE 2005 also introduced the hosted HTML application framework to Media Center. This allowed third party developers to improve and add to the functionality of Media Center.
Making a PC into a Media Center
My reasons for looking at setting up a full time Media Center PC came about due to the ever increasing price of subscription TV (Cable and Satellite in the UK). The price of a couple of months of high-end subscription TV will upgrade a standard PC to a decent Media Center.
Freeview (Digital Over The Air TV) is starting to take off in most European countries at the moment, and the UK is no different, so I decided to see if I could replace my Sky+ with a Media Center PC full time.
As I was already running Windows Vista Ultimate Edition as my desktop OS on all but one PC in the house, I could add the Media Center functionality with no real difficulty. However, I am no stranger to Windows XP Media Center 2005, as I used to use it to stream video to my Pocket PC.
After some research it seemed that for little outlay I could upgrade my home equipment to perform well in Vista and work as the replacement for Sky+.
What's Needed?
I already had a case that was approved by the wife for use in the lounge, some memory and most other requirements. What I did need, however, was a decent dual channel TV tuner and a DVI capable Vista graphics card so I could plumb it into my Panasonic LCD.
Resolving the graphics issue was the easy part. I needed a half height card, that had HDMI/DVI (as the Panasonic does not have VGA) and it had to be Vista compliant.
After a little searching around it came down to either the nVidia 6200 series or the ATI X600. I decided on the ATI card in the end, really due to the fact that I am happy with ATI cards as most my PCs run one or another of the X series. This also makes driver updates easier, but the choice is yours.
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Article comments
1 - 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 - Ashleigh
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 - 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 - Ashleigh
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 - 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 - 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 - Ashleigh
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 - 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 - ParaDoXaLL
hey rock delete your partition whit fdisk and rebuild a new one just format is not enough.
10 - 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 - ...ke
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 - 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 - Rich
Incorrect.
14 - MCE fan
For XP users please check this out: It's a great Vista or Windows 7 skin for XP MCE 2005 (Make Media Center in XP look like the one in Vista/Windows 7)!