R.I.P., Windows Media Center

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
75,399
Rumors that have been going around about Windows 10 and Windows Media Center have been put to rest, literally. Media Center will not be included in the Windows 10 rollout this summer and will not be offered as an add-on, according to a Microsoft executive. It's dead, Jim. :D

The decision is a disappointment to the small but incredibly vocal army of Media Center enthusiasts, who had held out hope that a Windows 10 Media Center add-on, similar to the one offered for Windows 8, might appear at the last minute.
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Well, I guess my HTPC will be running Windows 7 until that officially dies. Unless the HDHomerun DVR kickstarter turns out to be decent.
 
Cobalt35 said:
Who the hell uses Media Center anyway?
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Not that many but for those who do like me they tend to love it. The big thing that's not easily replaced is CableCard support. As mentioned earlier hopefully the HDHomerun DVR kickstater turns out something good. I kicked in my $30 today.
 
That sucks. Worked great with my cableCARD from FIOS back when I lived in the city. Also liked the Netflix plugin.

Still use WMC daily with MediaBrowser server. MB standalone player was crap last I tried it, but things work wonderfully in WMC.
 
Cobalt35 said:
Who the hell uses Media Center anyway?
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Lots of people, I use it, and have 2 360's as extenders to watch cable tv off of. Instead of paying for 3 dvrs (I think they are $18 a month (not sure) a piece, so thats over $50) I pay $2.50 for a cable card.

I was going to be upgrading to win 10, not any more, I need the dvr functionality.
 
munkle said:
I was going to be upgrading to win 10, not any more, I need the dvr functionality.
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I'll keep one 8.1 machine for now. I need the DVR for my CableCard but for all my other devices all I need is playback capability and there's plenty of apps that playback WTV files.
 
I'm not surprised it probably uses code from the list of banned code for win 10. Most of the major security issues from back doors accidentally created by the enterprise versions that ended up in the home systems that don't have full time proxy servers to block problem software using the otherwise innocent code. I know I plan to upgrade but I may leave one hard drive with win 8.1 media not sure.
 
Anyone with a TV tuner?

It's a fairly decent tuner and guide for OTA HDTV.
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Absolutely terrible. I have gone that route in the past with various TV tuners and various software options, never with good or consistent results. Always terrible lag and changing channels was a friggin joke in the time it took. I finally said hell with it and just put a small TV on the wall above my monitor in my man cave (small room I built in my garage) and watch TV that way. Computer and TV never did gel together and it's deader than Elvis. Media Player and Media Center goodbye, you never were up to speed anyway. Microsoft should just stay in the OS and keep it's nose out of everything else.
 
Mike89 said:
Absolutely terrible. I have gone that route in the past with various TV tuners and various software options, never with good or consistent results. Always terrible lag and changing channels was a friggin joke in the time it took. I finally said hell with it and just put a small TV on the wall above my monitor in my man cave (small room I built in my garage) and watch TV that way. Computer and TV never did gel together and it's deader than Elvis. Media Player and Media Center goodbye, you never were up to speed anyway. Microsoft should just stay in the OS and keep it's nose out of everything else.
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I'm guessing you never tried the HDHomerun Prime? The only tuner I would ever recommend.
 
heatlesssun said:
I'll keep one 8.1 machine for now. I need the DVR for my CableCard but for all my other devices all I need is playback capability and there's plenty of apps that playback WTV files.
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Not if those WTV files are flagged as protected content.
 
I still use it. All OTA, netflix and any movie I download are all played through wmc.
 
Mike89 said:
Absolutely terrible. I have gone that route in the past with various TV tuners and various software options, never with good or consistent results. Always terrible lag and changing channels was a friggin joke in the time it took. I finally said hell with it and just put a small TV on the wall above my monitor in my man cave (small room I built in my garage) and watch TV that way. Computer and TV never did gel together and it's deader than Elvis. Media Player and Media Center goodbye, you never were up to speed anyway. Microsoft should just stay in the OS and keep it's nose out of everything else.
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Sorry, but you don't know what you're talking about on this one. I have media center setup on four computers at my parents house with HDHomeRun Prime, and channel changing is just as fast as with the set top box.

Now, I did try a media center extender way back in the day, and that sucked donkey balls, particularly because Wireless-G was not up to the task and so it was crazy laggy.

But I can attest to media center working like a champ with my current setup (wireless AC except the garage which uses a powerline adapter because its so far away from the router). Ideally we'd have it gigabit cat6 on every computer as is the case at my house, but they wouldn't let me run cables everywhere.

The menu system is excellent, performance awesome, great DVR functionality, and they can exit out and check out photos or recorded TV shows or movies from the home server.
 
Also to put it in perspective media center is still supported til 2020(Win7) and 2023(Win8.1). So media center isn't completely dead yet. The only reason many of us use media center is that is the only way you're going to watch and record protected content.

I've been enjoying windows media center for about 4 years now. As time has progressed its feature set has decreased because things slow stopped being supported. Now the sports scores no longer work.

I just hope the HDHomerun DVR works well. I have no problem paying $30 if it works well. If it integrates well with kodi/xbmc good enough for me.
 
Could always convert your windows 7 installation to a VHD and run it inside windows 10 as a VM. That's what I'm going to do so I can have DX12. I game alot on my HTPC though. If it was strictly for media that would be pointless.
 
xLokiX said:
Could always convert your windows 7 installation to a VHD and run it inside windows 10 as a VM. That's what I'm going to do so I can have DX12. I game alot on my HTPC though. If it was strictly for media that would be pointless.
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And you would be quickly foiled by drm...
 
This doesn't make any sense to me, they just announced that xbox was going to incorporate the ability to do similar things with a tuner, now they are saying WMC is dead. It sounds like they are just moving its functionality into another product which we will not be clear about. That is unless MS really is stupid enough after all that garbage about gamers and windows 10 to think that people will be forced to buy an xbox instead of using WMC.
 
As someone who's loved WMC for years, another terrible decision by Microsoft, in my opinion.
 
Ducman69 said:
Sorry, but you don't know what you're talking about on this one. I have media center setup on four computers at my parents house with HDHomeRun Prime, and channel changing is just as fast as with the set top box.

Now, I did try a media center extender way back in the day, and that sucked donkey balls, particularly because Wireless-G was not up to the task and so it was crazy laggy.

But I can attest to media center working like a champ with my current setup (wireless AC except the garage which uses a powerline adapter because its so far away from the router). Ideally we'd have it gigabit cat6 on every computer as is the case at my house, but they wouldn't let me run cables everywhere.

The menu system is excellent, performance awesome, great DVR functionality, and they can exit out and check out photos or recorded TV shows or movies from the home server.
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This! WMC works beautifully with HDHomeRun tuners. Anyone who claims otherwise is an idiot.
 
crusty_juggler said:
Who the hell still has cable anyway?
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Older generations have grown up with streaming TV services, and its impossible to get them to give it up. They just love being able to sit there and flip through channels, plus if they want Fox News and crap like that its not like you can HULU or Netflix that.
 
I also use the HD Prime with an 8.1 media center VM feeding 2 Xbox 360s as extenders. It completely destroys anything the cable company offers without set top or DVR fees. I run media browser along side it for movies. Runs flawlessly.
 
sonicboom said:
Yep, they just went full retard with this choice.
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Microsoft makes more than it's fair share of mistakes but unfortunately this isn't one of them. Windows Media Center was created in a time without YouTube or Netflix or Hulu or iTunes or Amazon or fill in the name of whatever online video delivery system you want to name. Just on this site there's article after article about the decline of conventional TV and the acceleration of cord cutting.

Windows Media Center was a great product but it's simply outlived it's usefulness. And UI say that being an avid user of WMC.
 
I've got no problem with cord cutting, unfortunately we're not there yet. I have to jump through more hoops to adopt cord cutting than to simply use media center. So, for me, this was a mistake.
 
sonicboom said:
I've got no problem with cord cutting, unfortunately we're not there yet. I have to jump through more hoops to adopt cord cutting than to simply use media center. So, for me, this was a mistake.
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I hear you. But Windows Media Center was designed to do something that clearly has a shrinking future. It's not what I want but it's not at all a boneheaded decision either.
 
If the HDHomerun DVR pans out, then WMC can die for all I care. The only thing it's had going for it, is the ability to watch copy-protected channels like HBO.
 
I don't watch cable TV in the traditional sense and MC sucked at playing back my Blu Ray rips because it doesn't support any of the HD audio codecs and the picture quality always left a bit to be desired compared to other options so I never used it.

There are some pretty robust playback suites out there, are none of them good for PCs with tuner cards? Do programs like PLEX or Kodi work with tuner cards? If not this definitely sucks for those who used it. Hopefully we'll see some good open source/free options now that MS has dropped the ball.
 
I have a feeling we will see integrated extensions built into Windows, which won't be as good as having WMC but its better than nothing I guess.

I think WMC will still work with Win10, but they aren't going to update the interface for Win10.
 
Time Warner flags most channels as copy-protected too. Without WMC I'm probably screwed. I hope the HDHomeRun DVR software pans out.
 
grifter_66 said:
I don't watch cable TV in the traditional sense and MC sucked at playing back my Blu Ray rips because it doesn't support any of the HD audio codecs and the picture quality always left a bit to be desired compared to other options so I never used it.

There are some pretty robust playback suites out there, are none of them good for PCs with tuner cards? Do programs like PLEX or Kodi work with tuner cards? If not this definitely sucks for those who used it. Hopefully we'll see some good open source/free options now that MS has dropped the ball.
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Plex does not stream live TV from a tuner. Kodi though has an hdhomerun plugin that works great on copy free channels. Using wireless n at 5ghz works great to stream live TV as long as I'm the same room.

If you want to stream Blu-rays use Plex. For TV it's WMC if you need dvr functionality and most channels are copy free.
 
Sufu said:
If the HDHomerun DVR pans out, then WMC can die for all I care. The only thing it's had going for it, is the ability to watch copy-protected channels like HBO.
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Do they intend on allowing copy-protected content onto the HDHomerun DVR?
 
Cobalt35 said:
Who the hell uses Media Center anyway?
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Most of the TV tuners that work with Windows 7+ REQUIRE media center to work. Really disappointing.

Looks like at least one of my systems (HTPC) will be staying on Windows 7 for a long time.
Just hope Microsoft keeps supporting the guide for several more years.
 
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