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Windows XP Media Center Edition Review
Harpreet writes "It took 2 months but someone finally published an informative review of the new
Windows XP Media Center Edition operating system. AnandTech's
review has got everything you could want, including pictures galore. It looks
like the folks who make the Linux based Video
Disk Recorder have a new standard to live up to." Update: 01/08 21:06 GMT by T : Read on below for a different (Free software, CD-based) approach to computer-A/V integration.
Trunkboy writes "There are a lot of PVR projects out there (Freevo, TiVo, Dave&Dina, etc... but MoviX is a little different. MoviX is an entire distribution (linux of course) that is designed to play avi/mpg/mp3/etc files from a computer. Upgrading is easy, because it boots from a CD! Videos/music can be stored on a local hard drive, or on a network share. This project is incredible, but needs more developers. Stop in and give Roberto a hand -- MoviX shows some great potential!"
Computer Power User this month. Covered the HP with the emuzed card in particular
Direct link to article without ads
Ever heard of the LiRC project? Myth fully supports all liRC remotes.
As the article notes, there is a remote available for the MCE PC. There are also 3rd party remotes available if you want to build your own home theater PC.
Did you read the article? No mouse required. And this isn't inteded to be on your workstation. It's intended to be used with a computer sitting next to your television/AV Receiver.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
"Whenever AMD or Intel release a new CPU, everyone asks the question what we need faster processors for? The most common response for that is "to enable future applications" and a couple of years ago, there was enough processing power in a cheap enough form to finally give the VCR a brain - the idea of a set-top Personal Video Recorder (PVR) was born."
"Although MCE is by far the best first attempt at a PVR we've seen from any company, it isn't without its very noticeable flaws; the most serious of which happens to be this issue of performance. On a 2.53GHz Pentium 4, CPU utilization hovers around 30 - 40% while simply watching TV; note that this is with a hardware MPEG-2 encoder card and a very fast Pentium 4 CPU. We tried performing our own clean MCE install on the setup, updated all of the drivers and walked away with nothing better. There are clearly some issues with MCE as it shouldn't require such a high speed CPU to perform simple MPEG-2 decoding and writing to the disk. The CPU utilization drops to below 20% if MCE is closed and it's just recording in the background, which isn't too bad but still higher than you'd expect for a hardware MPEG-2 encoding engine that isn't relying on the host CPU.
The Tivo uses a 75Mhz PowerPC, which was available many years ago and is a joke of a processor right now. It's also what enables Tivo to not cost $1000. The fact that this windows media center slows down noticable with a 2.xx Ghz P4 is embarassing. Tivo rarely exhibits any slowdown, and it's not only using a alledgely more inferior PowerPC processor, but one from several years ago running at 3% of the speed of this thing.
http://www.naildrivin5.com/davec
Dave/Dina is similar to MythTV
:-)
At the moment MythTV has beter TV-options, better layout and a better logo
DaveDina has more AUDIO options, at the moment.
This is a limitation of most digital TV (cable or satellite). The STB can only decode one channel at a time, so you can only do something with one live channel.
You can get double LMB dishes, that provide two cables from the dish to the STB. None of the Bell STBs support two inputs, but you can buy another decoder for the second line for ~$99. Then you can record one show on the PVR and watch another on the other STB.
(STB=set-top box)
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
Read the following about details on DRM usage within Windows XP Media Center Edition. In most cases no DRM will be used at all. It is the responsibility of the provider to use CGMS-A (copy generation management system/analog) to mark a program for DRM.
d iacenter_copy.asp
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_me
Bullshit? Read this: http://www.theregus.com/content/4/24611.html
Go to radio shack, buy an IR lead, stick it on your serial port between DTR & ground. Use Lirc http://www.lirc.org/ and download the ir remote database. Use rc to send remote commands.
It's actually pretty easy.
-Jay
MythTV!
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
Actually you can now hold four drives in a tivo:
http://www.9thtee.com/tivoquaddrive.htm
The upgrade process on a tivo has been mainstreamed enough that upgrading your tivo drive is a pretty easy job.
The main difference between MCE and Tivo is that on MCE a 93gb disk gets you 5 hours and change of recording at best. A 40gb Tivo gets you the same amount of time, so until Micro$oft stops using a bloated encoding system you're not getting value for your disk space.
Personally, I still wouldn't trust MCE as my primary PVR. I don't want something that can be that flaky when recording stuff I want to watch.
My Tivo does a wonderful job for that, and in 3 years my Tivo has never crashed. This is where you want to spend money: Linux is designed to remain up for infinite periods of time, and that has always been an issue that Microsoft has been weak on. You can make MS platforms reliable if you are willing to take the time and devote energy to it. I know, I manage a large mix of MS and Linux platforms. My linux platforms have always been "install and mostly forget" servers. All I do it keep them updated and tidy up sometimes. My MS platforms need babying, they are always finding a different way to require attention, and when MS needs attention *everything* stops until you fix it.
The U.S. copyright act, silly. 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
>MCE does everything through software which,
>in technical terms "sucks ass".
RTFA. Microsoft specifically requires MCE PCs to come with a dedicated MPEG encoder hardware. It is not "doing everything through software". In fact, according to the article ATI and nVidia are having fits precisely because of the outrageous hardware requirements Microsoft has slapped on these systems.
Sounds to me like yet another case of crappy, bloated code from Microsoft. What a surprise. Would never have seen that one coming.
It gets even more interesting. Remember Apple's "Digital Hub" strategy? Well, TiVo is now officialy a member, with Rendezvous support promised in the documents!
This is different than Microsoft's strategy, as Apple is positioning its machines as the traffic controller, helping disparate devices exchange the relevant data. How about dumping your faves from TiVo onto your iMac and burning your own archive DVDs? How about a video iPod that can take your TiVo's recordings on the road? Or pictures from your digital camera into a TiVo album/slide show?
Not interesting enough? Well, Apple's opened the source of Rendevous, and has no qualms about allowing a Linux adaptation of it! Apparently they want to compete on the basis of their hardware/software integration again, not just on lockout.
So now we have two opposing philosophies: Microsoft's "embrace and extend", and Apple's "digital hub". One wants to take over the whole show, the other wants to connect and choreograph.