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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!"
The project mentioned in the topic is only for DBS satelite users. For everyone else, check out MythTV. This project is so impressive I cannot even explain all its features here. Just go look at it yourself. It is amazing, does almost everything TiVo does (including interactive electronic program guide), plus is a MAME front end, CD player, image browser, and more. Make sure to check out the screenshots!
It looks like the folks who make the Linux based Video Disk Recorder have a new standard to live up to.
Yes, the Linux VDR people will have to figure out how to hide spyware in their (open) source code.
Trolling is a art,
I have a TiVo.
I use a TiVo instead of piping my cable through my computer for a reason.
Its the same reason I have a football games on my GameCube.
Some things are just better without the PC.
Why would I use awkward PVR abilities of my PC (requiring me to sit in a specific spot, and use a mouse) when I can plop down on my couch and pick up the TiVo remote?
There's a reason speciliazed components sell better than PC software geared to do the same thing.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
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The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
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I took me that long to get it installed.
From the article:
Before you can proceed in the program guide setup you have to scroll through the 44 pages of the Terms of Service and select agree. Once again, this is done fairly quickly using the remote just by holding the down-arrow and then hitting ok.
That's good, sound advice there. Don't bother reading it.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
I really doubt that Microsoft is making this software with any intention aside from
3. Profit.
I don't think they have any grudge for Tivo, they just would like to make money off anything they can.
Microsoft has a wonderful monopoly going. Everyone knows they want/need a computer, and it comes packaged with so many things that most people don't have any idea what they bought it for.
They just continue to package things in it that people will use. Tivo may never make it, but when Microsoft can just bundle things together, you will.
I don't like corn, but if i had to buy it at the store every time I bought carrots, I would own a lot of corn, and you would never know I hated it.
http://use.perl.org
From the article:
Before you can proceed in the program guide setup you have to scroll through the 44 pages of the Terms of Service and select agree. Once again, this is done fairly quickly using the remote just by holding the down-arrow and then hitting ok. (Emphasis added)
Reading 44 pages is hardly a quick task, no matter if you have a remote control, scrolling mouse, or whatever. Unless it reads like 44 pages from a Dr. Seuss book. Then I wouldn't mind so much.
You may not reverse engineer on a train, you may not reverse engineer in the rain. You may not share files with a fox, you may not let files leave this box...
We need to develop some sort of global cache list so we can add the following from the article:
Isn't this a bit of an exageration? Obviously, they can't be "infinately" more powerful, but are they even considerably more powerful? I'm not too familiar with the spec's on PVR's, but I would bet they aren't that weak.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
We're trying to make a similar thing based on linux. (it's called DAVE/DINA and you can read all about that strange name -and more- over here).
I must admit, we were pretty surprised with this version of XP. It looks really cool (we haven't tried it though).
It made us realize we have to speed up our work on DAVE/DINA. So we're planning our first ISO-release this month.
It will include:
- Watching TV
- RECORDING TV (only europ i think)
- Playing/grabbing music
- Music Database
- Photo gallery
- playing/grabbing DVD
- playing DIVX
but a lot of work needs to be done. We hope to lure some contributors with this release.
But you can already start to help us now: Visit our website, and comment on our plans (so we know what we're doing right and what we're doing wrong), or make us a cool new logo
How do these and other open source projects handle things like cable boxes? The TiVo will change the box for me. I can't rely on a TV Tuner card to handle that since I need my digital cable box.
Does anyone make IR blasters that will talk to those boxes that can be made to work?
Do I really want my PC recording The Simposons while I play Unreal Tournament 2003?
I don't think so! I have a 3.06 P4 with an ATI 9700 and its pretty much maxed out while playing UT 2003. I bet them same will be true with the upcoming Doom title.
I'd much rather have my Replay 4500s doing their recording thing while I'm doing my computing/gaming thing.
You can get two or three Replays for the price of a Media Center PC, I think. You can hook them up to your network and share programing between them, your PCs and friends on the net. And they won't steel CPU cycles from your PC.
"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
No it doesn't :)
I don't trust my win-box farther than I can throw it (which happens to be approximatly 7,5 meters if detached from all cables.)
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
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.
MythTV!
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
Any TiVo owner will immediately spot this little issue: namely, that 93GB of disk space equals 5 hours 8 minutes of record time at best quality. Even if the space available for PVR functions is 75% of 93GB (as implied in the screenshot), that's still about five hours for 70GB of disk space.
Maybe MCE's definition of "best" quality is dramatically higher than TiVo's, but TiVo can store about 9 hours at "best" quality on a 30GB HD. On a machine with 70GB of disk space, it would easily be able to record over 20 hours at best quality. Why can MCE only squeeze a quarter as much video onto the same amount of space?
Also, I find it ironic that MCE has such grievous hardware requirements. It requires a TV tuner card with hardware MPEG-2 encoding, yet still requires a really fast CPU, fast RAM and a fast, big hard drive. Admittedly, TiVo's aren't sharing their hardware with other apps (in most cases), but first-generation TiVos managed to squeak by with a 50MHz PowerPC and 4400RPM hard drives. Surely, MS can squeeze stutter-free performance out of moderately powerful CPUs and HDs, can't they?
...and that's why You'll always put a "personal firewall" on Your windows-machines and never let them out unless You specifically tell it to.
Putting a firewall on a box that's already running hostile code is a non-starter in terms of security. Remember, Microsoft has complete access to your system, and can do whatever they want to your firewall, including ignoring it completely. You'd be much better off front-ending your XP box with a firewall running on a Linux machine.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?