Slashdot Mirror
TiVo vs. Windows Media Center Edition
The Importance of writes "Two reviewers make head-to-head comparisons of TiVo and Windows Media Center Edition (here and here). TiVo still comes out ahead, but MCE is improving. Of course, some tout the flexibility of PC-based DVRs, while others question what this flexibility means when you have things like the broadcast flag and the INDUCE Act."
Hey...guess what I've never had to reboot so far...my Tivo. I don't intend for that to change anytime soon either.
Personally I think hardware companies should encourage this practice. I picked my wireless router because if it's readily available
third party linux-firmware
If Tivo encouraged this practice, they'd have far more than media center very quickly.
that's exactly what i was thinking...don't let your anti-MS stance blind you to what they're doing...what if MS stumbles upon a cure for cancer...you just gonna ignore it, because MS discovered it???
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
It's been covered a million times here, but MythTV does more than MCE or Tivo.
One day I gave MCE a try and found it to be a dreadfull experience. Sure, some of the widgets and transitions were nice - and the remote was pretty sexy (anyone wanna help me write a driver for Linux?), but it just left me wanting more.
I have most of my media living on a different machine - MCE had a hard time dealing with that. I had to import my mp3s (not oggs - god forbid) into Media Player before MCE would recognize them.
Large movies were a pain too - MCE wanted a nice screen shot of each movie - so a directory with 10-15 divxs was painful to browse.
I have MythTV set up with a PVR-250 and it's the best thing ever. Automatic commercial flagging? check Windows? Not even. So much better.
Like sex? Read and write about it! Indecent Blogging
It seems to me that there will always be two markets; device and PC-based. Even if MCE is a pre-packaged, Microsoft deal, it still involves a desktop computer which not everyone has, or even, *gulp*, wants!
Some people will always like to be able to control what is going on and configure their own system. Others will want nothing to do with configuration of any kind and will simply want it to work. Until M$ spins the MCE off into a device or integrates it with X-Box or whatever, the PC'ness of it will remain its barrier of entry to the mainstream.
I deal with computers all day long and when I get time to watch TV, the last thing I want to think about are computers.
"I'm a karate man. Karate mans bleed on the inside."
. . . even if it does pass, is that vendors are going to be very careful when describng a product to only include non-infringing uses in its marketing material. It would be instructional to go look at the old ads for the GoVideo dual deck VCR. They talked about its lawful purposes, while revealing enough that someone with two brain cells would think "Whoa! I could use this to copiez teh movies!"
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
No, not Linux. No, not even ease of use. Picture quality with DirecTV. DirecTV with Tivo is the only solution I've seen that captures the satellite's MPEG stream perfectly, while still providing a usable interface (hear me, Dish Network?)
I'd seriously consider building my own set, but there is no solution out there that doesn't have some analog to digital conversion at some point. And yes, it matters. Particularly if you have a 40" HDTV. Digital cable/satellite compression is pretty visible as it is; adding an analog conversion makes it look hideous.
In my idea world, I'd have a media PC that played DVDs, stored CDs, streamed direct digital television (like my Tivo) and (as a luxury) was wirelessly connected to the internet. All of these features exist as different pieces in other machines, but no one has them all together.
We dont need no DRM enabled cancer cure. The GPLed treatment is almost as good. Granted you need to swap out about half of your body parts to be compatible with it.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
As someone who built his own MCE 2004 based machine, I have to admit I am VERY impressed with this OS. There is no way I would buy a TIVO now as I can customize this machine with any codecs and plugins I want and do as I please. People who say that the PC doesn't belong in the living room will have to wake up, Microsoft has figured this out a long time ago and are on the right track (there is still lots of room for improvement of course).
My MCE 2004 machine (which runs 24/7) is 100% stable (the OS is based on XP sp1), even when keeping up to date with all the patches out there. I ended up getting rid of my SA8000 DVR from time warner because it is so reliable. There are addons out there such as the plugin which provides a nice interface to the video library (you pick the movie by clicking the 'cover', and it will automatically mount the ISO), or the web based interface. Add the fact that you can listen to FM radio using a PVR250MCE or PVR350 series TV tuner card, and you have a very nice entertainment machine. The only thing which comes close to this setup is MythTV (which I do like), but has some reliability & configuration issues which aren't user friendly.
Since MCE can't be bought legally (you can only download it when you have a MSDN license), I will be 'buying' a second MCE machine once the next release comes out, and network the 2 machines (and other custom PVR machines which can share video data) so I can watch my video/dvd/broadcast anywhere in the house.
Using a computer to replace a Tivo *is* rather silly. Using a computer to replace a CD player, DVD player, and Tivo plus provide Newsfeeds weather maps, video conferencing, create DVDs of your favorite shows and more not to mention provide that content to any room in your home isn't.
Besides the hurdles involved, I think the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) plays a bigger part than we think about. I tried the TV on PC thing, and when it crashed in the middle of a show, or I had to use the computer and she wanted to watch something.... Yeah, I still use Tivo for TV and my PC for PC. ;)
The MCE box is a general-purpose WIndows XP machine, so you can use it as a web browser, email terminal, and game machine. ... Of course, the downside of this is that you have to keep your MCE up to date on patches and fixes-- something that might be an unwanted hassle for people who don't live patch management every day.
So as long as you keep it disconnected from the internet, you are better off until MS figures out how to deliver TCP/IP safety to the masses. The MCE is feature rich and aimed towards providing a full entertainment control center for audio components (AF/FM CD/TAPE/Record Player/Digital jukebox) as well as video components (PVR/Tuner/DVD Player/Digital jukebox). The internet connectivity or broadband cable/satellite are going to be part of the experience too. So Microsoft is going to have to address the security problems to make this fully marketable. It is not going to do well if it has a big sticker that says "Warning: do not connect to the Internet".
Have you Meta Moderated t