Windows Media Center: Win 7 vs. Vista

[Zarathustra[H]]

Hey all,

I am in the planning stages of building a HTPC.

Is there a real difference between Windows Media Center in Win 7 and Vista? If so what are the differences?

I own a legal Vista key thats kicking around that I don't need for anything else. I just plan on booting direct to Windows Media Center on the HTPC.

Is getting a system builders license of Win 7 worth the $100, or would I even notice a difference with the Vista version?

I was originally planning on running XBMC under linux, until I found out how poor UVD support there is in the current linux drivers, so I guess Windows it is...

heck, for all I know they may even be identical on both OS:es, just like how IE are identical on both...

I appreciate any feedback.

--matt

 

[xFROSTx]

They are pretty similar in the terms of look and feel. As in if you are used to using Vista MC, 7MC will be a seamless switch. Features wise, 7MC is leaps and bounds better IMO, I wouldn't even bother with Vista MC. Your analogy with IE is actually pretty spot on, but I think you are overlooking the fact that IE8 > IE7 > IE6, even though they may look similar.

PS: If you have a valid Vista key, you could get the Win7 Home Premium Upgrade for a little less. Even better, for $120, you can get the Win7 Family upgrade pack that has 3 keys to upgrade any computer running Vista or XP (I think XP counts...).

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

PS: If you have a valid Vista key, you could get the Win7 Home Premium Upgrade for a little less. Even better, for $120, you can get the Win7 Family upgrade pack that has 3 keys to upgrade any computer running Vista or XP (I think XP counts...).

Thanks for the pointer.

Wish I'd known about this a few months back. I have SO many legal XP keys as well as one legal XP 64bit edition key and two legal Vista keys...

That would have saved me a good chunk of cash

 

[af22]

i would not even touch vista. i used vista media center for 2 years, that thing never ran right, ever!

the biggest problem is sleep. sleep just simply does not work properly with vista. the number of times my HTPC "forgot" to wake up to start recording, i ended up having to keep it on 24/7.

windows 7 is almost a walk in a park compared to vista.

 

[Justintoxicated]

Media Portal > than either one, so save your money and use media portal.

yes the win7 version is better, but is it worth the $100? Well maybe for the OS itself, but not for the media center. I disabled MCE on my win7 ultimate and run Media Portal. Much more configurable and room for Plugins. It also supports TV server capabilities which is critical if you want to share TV tuners with other computers on the network.

just my two cents.

 

[GushpinBob]

If you want to use hybrid TV tuners or QAM then go with Windows 7. I could never get the former to work properly under Vista and you need to go through the back channels on the Internet to obtain the 2008 TV pack (which added QAM support to Vista MC). Too much trouble in my opinion if you plan to record television.

 

[kyodai]

I'd go for win 7 at all cost, Vista has such a bad performance you'd regret even considering it if you compare both.

 

[ghostee]

I was originally planning on running XBMC under linux, until I found out how poor UVD support there is in the current linux drivers, so I guess Windows it is...

Spend $50 on an nvidia card and go XBMC Live / Linux. Works really well.

 

[Ryokurin]

Media Portal > than either one, so save your money and use media portal.

yes the win7 version is better, but is it worth the $100? Well maybe for the OS itself, but not for the media center. I disabled MCE on my win7 ultimate and run Media Portal. Much more configurable and room for Plugins. It also supports TV server capabilities which is critical if you want to share TV tuners with other computers on the network.

just my two cents.

Yes Media Portal and my favorite SageTV are more customizable but there is something to say about how MCE is pretty much ready out of the box which is more important to some people. Just pointing out there's pros and cons to all.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Hmm..

To me right now recording live TV is not a big deal (but I may do this in the future), but I do want something that can access as many online show sources as possible as well as can play DVD/Blu-rays, stream Netflix and video files shared on my home server.

Do any of the options out there integrate nicely with ABC's streaming content?

 

[xFROSTx]

Hmm..

To me right now recording live TV is not a big deal (but I may do this in the future), but I do want something that can access as many online show sources as possible as well as can play DVD/Blu-rays, stream Netflix and video files shared on my home server.

Do any of the options out there integrate nicely with ABC's streaming content?

Simple answer: Nope.



Linux does not support DRM very well, which means Netflix and other legal streaming options do not play nicely with it. There was a "Frontend of choice" poll a couple of weeks ago, there's a reason why MCE is the most popular. Unless you have a specific reason for going with another solution like Media Portal, I don't understand why you would limit yourself right off the bat. With the exception of more complex Live TV Server/Client functionality, MCE is going to be able to do everything the other front ends can do and more.

 

[Justintoxicated]

Simple answer: Nope.



Linux does not support DRM very well, which means Netflix and other legal streaming options do not play nicely with it. There was a "Frontend of choice" poll a couple of weeks ago, there's a reason why MCE is the most popular. Unless you have a specific reason for going with another solution like Media Portal, I don't understand why you would limit yourself right off the bat. With the exception of more complex Live TV Server/Client functionality, MCE is going to be able to do everything the other front ends can do and more.

Exception of Client/Server and Plugins.

My Videos Plugin for media portal does what your looking for, but I'm not sure about ABC particularly , theres about 50 sites it will extract videos from though.

Heres a thread on it.
http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/onlinevideos-244/abc-iview-91836/

I found this plugin for ABC http://www.team-mediaportal.com/plugins-and-skins-archive/videos-movies/1478-my-zinc
But it's old so I have my doubts that it will still work if they can't getting it working in online videos plugin.

Can someone link me to the best MCE tv series interface?

 

[xFROSTx]

Exception of Client/Server and Plugins.

My Videos Plugin for media portal does what your looking for, but I'm not sure about ABC particularly , theres about 50 sites it will extract videos from though.

Heres a thread on it.
http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/onlinevideos-244/abc-iview-91836/

I found this plugin for ABC http://www.team-mediaportal.com/plugins-and-skins-archive/videos-movies/1478-my-zinc
But it's old so I have my doubts that it will still work if they can't getting it working in online videos plugin.

Can someone link me to the best MCE tv series interface?

Ummmm, that was my point. MCE has much better native integration, so you don't always need a plugin. If you want more advanced features or more control, then you can always go plugin hunting. How is it any sort of advantage that the only option is to use a plugin? (Especially one that looks like a PITA at that).


Best MCE TV series interface? Like I said, you don't really need one if you are just starting out, MCE takes care of it all just fine. If you have a large media library, or want more control/features, Media Browser is a very popular plugin for both TV and movies. MyTV used to be fairly popular, but it's been a while since I have heard much talk about it anymore.

http://www.mediabrowser.tv/

 

[Justintoxicated]

Ummmm, that was my point. MCE has much better native integration, so you don't always need a plugin. If you want more advanced features or more control, then you can always go plugin hunting. How is it any sort of advantage that the only option is to use a plugin? (Especially one that looks like a PITA at that).


Best MCE TV series interface? Like I said, you don't really need one if you are just starting out, MCE takes care of it all just fine. If you have a large media library, or want more control/features, Media Browser is a very popular plugin for both TV and movies. MyTV used to be fairly popular, but it's been a while since I have heard much talk about it anymore.

http://www.mediabrowser.tv/

Really? Out of the box, what does MCE provide integration for that Media portal does not ? Just curious because I really didn't see much there other than movie trailers when I tried it.

Can you link me to what a screen looks like for a TV series with Media Browser? I see from that gallery what it looks like after you have selected the show, but how does it separate shows from movies, and then within the Tv Series Menu what does it typically look like when selecting the desired TV series (I realize there may be more than one way to set this up).
http://www.mediabrowser.tv/images/gallery/g7.jpg

For example, under TV series Media portal with the My TV Plugin (Part of streamedMP package of MP) it looks like this when selecting your series.
(Well Sort of I have mine displaying Fan Art at the top, banners in the middle, and description at the bottom)...
So it would be a combination of these two. (since its customizable although I'd assume so is Media Browser?)
http://www.team-mediaportal.com/components/com_mtree/img/listings/m/148.jpg
http://www.team-mediaportal.com/components/com_mtree/img/listings/m/149.jpg

My Videos is very easy to setup, you download it, install it, then accesses it from the menu in media portal. Links were to show that people are working on ABC and where they are hitting their sticking points due to restrictions imposed on ABC itself.

My Origional reason for switching off MCE was because it was stumbling on playing some encoded videos I had, (No Sound) and I was not able to select a different Codec to get sound working (can't remember the exact codec but it was forcing Pass through even though I did not have HDMI and needed sound to go through my sound card). I tried some codec packs etc but it never solved my problem. I found in media portal it just worked, although it does allow me to select different players and codecs via a menu. SO in some ways I thought integration of media portal was better out of the box. Not saying that there is no solution to this issue, just that I was never able to find one, so its still broken in Media Center 7 to this day. I have XBMC, Media Portal, MCE7 and SageTV installed on this box so I can easily change, except back to MCE7 since I had to override some registry settings to allow other Media Centers to work with the green button (Not hard but definitely not user friendly, thanks MS)

Basically I had this problem with DTS http://www.internubs.com/how-to/how-to-play-mkvs-in-wmc-7/ Only I have ffdshow installed, and it plays find in WMP, just not within MCE7

 

[CrimandEvil]

I started playing around with HTPCs with XP and Media Portal, used MCE2k5 for a bit but waited to finally move an HTPC from testing to actual living room use when Vista came out. My first HTPC ran Vista Home Premium and I had nothing but issues with it since day one. Little annoyances that Windows 7 seems to have fixed,

As soon as the beta hit I switched over to 7 and haven't looked back. Right now, the only issue I have is that Netflix seems to have screwed up. :/

 

[Justintoxicated]

I started playing around with HTPCs with XP and Media Portal, used MCE2k5 for a bit but waited to finally move an HTPC from testing to actual living room use when Vista came out. My first HTPC ran Vista Home Premium and I had nothing but issues with it since day one. Little annoyances that Windows 7 seems to have fixed,

As soon as the beta hit I switched over to 7 and haven't looked back. Right now, the only issue I have is that Netflix seems to have screwed up. :/

It really has come a long way. I hope no one it taking my posts as bashing MCE7. I know I won't be switching back, even if I ever solve my sound issue, simply because I need the TV Client/Server Functionality for the rest of the house.

 

[CrimandEvil]

Really? Out of the box, what does MCE provide integration for that Media portal does not ? Just curious because I really didn't see much there other than movie trailers when I tried it.

WMC really needs to be partnered with Media Browser (or My Movies) to be able to compare to Media Portal out of box.

Can you link me to what a screen looks like for a TV series with Media Browser? I see from that gallery what it looks like after you have selected the show, but how does it separate shows from movies, and then within the Tv Series Menu what does it typically look like when selecting the desired TV series (I realize there may be more than one way to set this up).
http://www.mediabrowser.tv/images/gallery/g7.jpg

For example, under TV series Media portal with the My TV Plugin (Part of streamedMP package of MP) it looks like this when selecting your series.
(Well Sort of I have mine displaying Fan Art at the top, banners in the middle, and description at the bottom)...
So it would be a combination of these two. (since its customizable although I'd assume so is Media Browser?)
http://www.team-mediaportal.com/components/com_mtree/img/listings/m/148.jpg
http://www.team-mediaportal.com/components/com_mtree/img/listings/m/149.jpg

I could maybe do some screens of what mine looks like later tonight after work but it's not all that different. Mine is setup for banners and I have them in a row along the bottom of the screen, you scroll from side to side and fan art is displayed on the top 2/3s of the screen with the series title right above the banner. Clicking into a show's banner brings up the description and series selection which after you can then pick out your episode to watch. I think it's very intuitive and no one has had problems picking up the remote and browsing through it.

My Origional reason for switching off MCE was because it was stumbling on playing some encoded videos I had, (No Sound) and I was not able to select a different Codec to get sound working (can't remember the exact codec but it was forcing Pass through even though I did not have HDMI and needed sound to go through my sound card). I tried some codec packs etc but it never solved my problem. I found in media portal it just worked, although it does allow me to select different players and codecs via a menu. SO in some ways I thought integration of media portal was better out of the box.

That was my original reason for using MP too back in the XP/Vista days. WMC had a lot of forced issues that only came up when using certain media (for me it was anime and subtitles mostly). I haven't had any of those issues using win 7 though.

 

[xFROSTx]

Really? Out of the box, what does MCE provide integration for that Media portal does not ? Just curious because I really didn't see much there other than movie trailers when I tried it.

Netflix for one, unless this has recently changed w/MP

Can you link me to what a screen looks like for a TV series with Media Browser? I see from that gallery what it looks like after you have selected the show, but how does it separate shows from movies, and then within the Tv Series Menu what does it typically look like when selecting the desired TV series (I realize there may be more than one way to set this up).
http://www.mediabrowser.tv/images/gallery/g7.jpg

For example, under TV series Media portal with the My TV Plugin (Part of streamedMP package of MP) it looks like this when selecting your series.
(Well Sort of I have mine displaying Fan Art at the top, banners in the middle, and description at the bottom)...
So it would be a combination of these two. (since its customizable although I'd assume so is Media Browser?)
http://www.team-mediaportal.com/components/com_mtree/img/listings/m/148.jpg
http://www.team-mediaportal.com/components/com_mtree/img/listings/m/149.jpg

I'll see if I can dig up some screenshots of my setup, or find you a link somewhere, but basically, I select the Media Browser tile from the main menu and I get a page with my 3 main libraries - DVD, Blu-Ray and TV Series, with some pretty icons for each. Select one and you get you movies/tv shows listed alphabetically. You can have a number of views, I use cover flow which gives me a scrolling filmstrip of the Movie/TV show cover w/fan art as the background, but what you seem to be looking for is the banner view. It looks very similar to the screenshots of MP you linked. I didn't know MP did this right out of the box, I remember it not being quite as "pretty" for lack of a better term. Looks like things have changed... Media Browser is pretty simple to setup though, so I'm not complaining.

My Videos is very easy to setup, you download it, install it, then accesses it from the menu in media portal. Links were to show that people are working on ABC and where they are hitting their sticking points due to restrictions imposed on ABC itself.

I haven't used it in a long time, but I remember having a spot in my guide that gave me access to online stuff from some of the major broadcasters. I'd have to turn those channels back on in my guide to check for sure.

My Origional reason for switching off MCE was because it was stumbling on playing some encoded videos I had, (No Sound) and I was not able to select a different Codec to get sound working (can't remember the exact codec but it was forcing Pass through even though I did not have HDMI and needed sound to go through my sound card). I tried some codec packs etc but it never solved my problem. I found in media portal it just worked, although it does allow me to select different players and codecs via a menu. SO in some ways I thought integration of media portal was better out of the box. Not saying that there is no solution to this issue, just that I was never able to find one, so its still broken in Media Center 7 to this day. I have XBMC, Media Portal, MCE7 and SageTV installed on this box so I can easily change, except back to MCE7 since I had to override some registry settings to allow other Media Centers to work with the green button (Not hard but definitely not user friendly, thanks MS)

Basically I had this problem with DTS http://www.internubs.com/how-to/how-to-play-mkvs-in-wmc-7/ Only I have ffdshow installed, and it plays find in WMP, just not within MCE7

That's not an uncommon problem actually. Depending on your setup, any number of things could be your fix. Some common things that pop into my head:

1 - FFDshow not configured properly. By default, I think it's setup to do bitstreaming (Or a compressed version of bitstreaming) over HDMI for DD/DTS. If you need to decode DD/DTS on the computer, or are not using HDMI, I believe you have to change a few options in FFDshow's audio decoder.

2 - If you are using 64bit win7, you need both the 32bit and 64bit version of FFDshow installed, configured the same.

3 - Haali Media Splitter is an annoying piece of shit. Yell at it some more, I think it helps.

4 - Incorrect/old drivers - You probably already tried this though.

5 - Window's sound properties may not be configured properly.

6 - Windows sound properties are configured correctly, but you selected stereo sound during MCE setup and forgot about it. - Happened to me.

7 - If all else fails, Sharks007 codec pack should do the trick. I saw a guide once that explains how to use it to do pretty much any type of sound output through MCE, but I try to avoid codec packs. I would only use it as a last ditch effort because I believe the codec pack has an option to force it to completely "take over" when codecs seems to be fighting each other. I hope that made sense.



Most of this stuff is a little more advanced than the first time HTPC'er might be looking for though, which was how I was interpreting the OP's situation. If you know exactly what you do and don't need in an HTPC frontend, then yes, there are other options out there that may suit your needs better. I mentioned Server/Client functionality because that is a big one where IMO, Sage and MP can be better. It's not like you can't do it with MCE though. 360's may be a PITA to work with as far as extenders go, but if cablecard is a need of yours, it can be done with some tweaking. On the other hand, if that doesn't matter to you, Sage and MP would be a better choice because of the better/easier to setup extenders. Just like cablecard, legal online content is designed for the windows environment. I'm sure there are workarounds, and I'm sure over time they will get better and better; but if your just starting out, like it sounds to me the OP is doing, I see no reason to make things harder for yourself right off the bat.

 

[Justintoxicated]

Netflix for one, unless this has recently changed w/MP



I'll see if I can dig up some screenshots of my setup, or find you a link somewhere, but basically, I select the Media Browser tile from the main menu and I get a page with my 3 main libraries - DVD, Blu-Ray and TV Series, with some pretty icons for each. Select one and you get you movies/tv shows listed alphabetically. You can have a number of views, I use cover flow which gives me a scrolling filmstrip of the Movie/TV show cover w/fan art as the background, but what you seem to be looking for is the banner view. It looks very similar to the screenshots of MP you linked. I didn't know MP did this right out of the box, I remember it not being quite as "pretty" for lack of a better term. Looks like things have changed... Media Browser is pretty simple to setup though, so I'm not complaining.





I haven't used it in a long time, but I remember having a spot in my guide that gave me access to online stuff from some of the major broadcasters. I'd have to turn those channels back on in my guide to check for sure.





That's not an uncommon problem actually. Depending on your setup, any number of things could be your fix. Some common things that pop into my head:

1 - FFDshow not configured properly. By default, I think it's setup to do bitstreaming (Or a compressed version of bitstreaming) over HDMI for DD/DTS. If you need to decode DD/DTS on the computer, or are not using HDMI, I believe you have to change a few options in FFDshow's audio decoder.

2 - If you are using 64bit win7, you need both the 32bit and 64bit version of FFDshow installed, configured the same.

7 - If all else fails, Sharks007 codec pack should do the trick. I saw a guide once that explains how to use it to do pretty much any type of sound output through MCE, but I try to avoid codec packs. I would only use it as a last ditch effort because I believe the codec pack has an option to force it to completely "take over" when codecs seems to be fighting each other. I hope that made sense.



but if your just starting out, like it sounds to me the OP is doing, I see no reason to make things harder for yourself right off the bat.

Thanks, I don't believe I have both version of FFDSHOW installed. Don't seem to need both for Sage, XBMC and MP, cause those all worked fine. Also did not try that codec pack, I hate codec packs as well.

Oh and as with MC7 you need to install a skin/pack to get the nice interface. The newest StreamedMP is QUITE amazing, it walks you through the configuration so everything will display as you please and has a configuration module to change all the options later as well. Your right though, nextflix is not built into MediaPortal which is no shock, but you can pick a plugin for netflix in MP if you want that feature.

I don't have an Xbox360, but thats interesting you can use it as an extender for MC7 . (but will it steal the TV tuners from the server?) I'm just trying to understand how it works, cause it would be no good if your recording something in the living room on one tuner, watching TV on the other, then someone goes to watch TV in the bedroom and the xbox steals one of the tuners. I guess its not really a TV server right but I think you know what I mean. For example I have an HDHR on the network, any computer can accesses it, but if it is not accessed from the server, then an extender device can steal a tuner from MP tv server because there is nothing to manager the tuners.

I'm looking forward to Media Portal 2!

 

[xFROSTx]

Thanks, I don't believe I have both version of FFDSHOW installed. Don't seem to need both for Sage, XBMC and MP, cause those all worked fine. Also did not try that codec pack, I hate codec packs as well.

That's actually good for you, easy fix. That's what I would have put my money on, it made the most sense since you said it was working in windows media player, but not windows media center. This would make even more sense if your installs of XBMC, Sage and MP were all 32bit as well...

Oh and as with MC7 you need to install a skin/pack to get the nice interface. The newest StreamedMP is QUITE amazing, it walks you through the configuration so everything will display as you please and has a configuration module to change all the options later as well. Your right though, nextflix is not built into MediaPortal which is no shock, but you can pick a plugin for netflix in MP if you want that feature.

Yeah, I didn't realize how much MCE is lagging these days in the "prettiness factor". At least it's an easy fix, since it's something that the majority of users like to do.

I don't have an Xbox360, but thats interesting you can use it as an extender for MC7 . (but will it steal the TV tuners from the server?) I'm just trying to understand how it works, cause it would be no good if your recording something in the living room on one tuner, watching TV on the other, then someone goes to watch TV in the bedroom and the xbox steals one of the tuners. I guess its not really a TV server right but I think you know what I mean. For example I have an HDHR on the network, any computer can accesses it, but if it is not accessed from the server, then an extender device can steal a tuner from MP tv server because there is nothing to manager the tuners.

I'm looking forward to Media Portal 2!

My xbox360's are a "perfect" clone of my main HTPC, they can do everything my main HTPC does, just a little slower sometimes. By "perfect", I mean that I invented new cuss words to call it during testing. Then again, this was a while ago when there weren't so many guides and general info out there. Also, I can be a little demanding sometimes, so my definition of perfect usually requires a little more work. Initial setup is dead simple, everything will auto-detect pretty much. Be smarter than me though and setup the xbox next to your HTPC, or you will spend more time walking back and forth 2 or 3 times than you do actually setting it up. Watching recorded TV, watching live TV, the "basics" pretty much, all work right away no tinkering needed. There are a few stumbling blocks though. Some plugins may not work. I realized now I haven't tried it in a while, but I believe netflix will not work through the 360. The reason I haven't tried it in a while is because the xbox has it through live gold anyway. Another stumbling block, is stubbornly refusing to just adopt the .wtv or dvrms filetype. It's understandable, I mean, who wants to give into "the man"? The short of it though, is that I don't see any noticeable quality loss and it only takes an additional 10 min or so to convert a 2hr, 16.5GB GB MKV into a 16.5GB WTV file which still maintains the h264 codec as well as DD/DTS 5.1 audio. It's not that MKV, ISO, Divx, etc, just don't work, it's that sometimes a plugin, or tweak is necessary to get the full functionality one might want. For me, it wasn't that the xbox couldn't play my BR rips in MKV, the issue was that the quality was poor, I didn't have FF or RW, and it sometimes stuttered. Switching the MKV's to WTV files corrected the poor quality (Because the HTPC was transcoding it on the fly in the background) and gave me my FF/RW functions back (Native filetypes seem to always give you extra features I've noticed). The stuttering issue was because a 25mbps video stream from the occasional super-visually-intense scene from a BR rip appears to be too much for the old ass hardware in the 360 to keep up with. 15mbps seems to be about the limit, I do my BR rips with a 14.5Mbps limit (Using Ripbot264) which makes them perfectly playable on my 360's. Yes, there is some compression, but using Planet Earth's "Birds" scene as a comparison (which is one of those 25mbps scenes), I have concluded that if you can tell the difference on my 50in plasma, I hope you are flying airplanes or something because you have eyes like a freaking hawk. The only real downside with using 360's as extenders for me is that I don't believe the 360 can output the DD/DTS stream for decoding by a receiver. Not a huge deal to me since the only surround sound system I really care about is the living room.


Again, I would consider a decent amount of this a little more advanced compared to a basic setup. Most of my issues didn't surface until I added a couple 360's as extenders, started doing BR rips and wanted 5.1 sound in everything possible. Did everything work straight out of the box? Of course not, I wasn't expecting it to since any front-end will require some tweaking to get it just they way you want it. As far as basics go, MCE got it pretty right IMO.

 

[Justintoxicated]

That's actually good for you, easy fix. That's what I would have put my money on, it made the most sense since you said it was working in windows media player, but not windows media center. This would make even more sense if your installs of XBMC, Sage and MP were all 32bit as well...




Yeah, I didn't realize how much MCE is lagging these days in the "prettiness factor". At least it's an easy fix, since it's something that the majority of users like to do.






My xbox360's are a "perfect" clone of my main HTPC, they can do everything my main HTPC does, just a little slower sometimes. By "perfect", I mean that I invented new cuss words to call it during testing. Then again, this was a while ago when there weren't so many guides and general info out there. Also, I can be a little demanding sometimes, so my definition of perfect usually requires a little more work. Initial setup is dead simple, everything will auto-detect pretty much. Be smarter than me though and setup the xbox next to your HTPC, or you will spend more time walking back and forth 2 or 3 times than you do actually setting it up. Watching recorded TV, watching live TV, the "basics" pretty much, all work right away no tinkering needed. There are a few stumbling blocks though. Some plugins may not work. I realized now I haven't tried it in a while, but I believe netflix will not work through the 360. The reason I haven't tried it in a while is because the xbox has it through live gold anyway. Another stumbling block, is stubbornly refusing to just adopt the .wtv or dvrms filetype. It's understandable, I mean, who wants to give into "the man"? The short of it though, is that I don't see any noticeable quality loss and it only takes an additional 10 min or so to convert a 2hr, 16.5GB GB MKV into a 16.5GB WTV file which still maintains the h264 codec as well as DD/DTS 5.1 audio. It's not that MKV, ISO, Divx, etc, just don't work, it's that sometimes a plugin, or tweak is necessary to get the full functionality one might want. For me, it wasn't that the xbox couldn't play my BR rips in MKV, the issue was that the quality was poor, I didn't have FF or RW, and it sometimes stuttered. Switching the MKV's to WTV files corrected the poor quality (Because the HTPC was transcoding it on the fly in the background) and gave me my FF/RW functions back (Native filetypes seem to always give you extra features I've noticed). The stuttering issue was because a 25mbps video stream from the occasional super-visually-intense scene from a BR rip appears to be too much for the old ass hardware in the 360 to keep up with. 15mbps seems to be about the limit, I do my BR rips with a 14.5Mbps limit (Using Ripbot264) which makes them perfectly playable on my 360's. Yes, there is some compression, but using Planet Earth's "Birds" scene as a comparison (which is one of those 25mbps scenes), I have concluded that if you can tell the difference on my 50in plasma, I hope you are flying airplanes or something because you have eyes like a freaking hawk. The only real downside with using 360's as extenders for me is that I don't believe the 360 can output the DD/DTS stream for decoding by a receiver. Not a huge deal to me since the only surround sound system I really care about is the living room.


Again, I would consider a decent amount of this a little more advanced compared to a basic setup. Most of my issues didn't surface until I added a couple 360's as extenders, started doing BR rips and wanted 5.1 sound in everything possible. Did everything work straight out of the box? Of course not, I wasn't expecting it to since any front-end will require some tweaking to get it just they way you want it. As far as basics go, MCE got it pretty right IMO.

I hear ya, only need surround sound int he office (Hooked to computer) and living room (main HTPC), I'll probably just migrate my existing HTPC (Dell box) into the bedroom once my new one is completed. Thats pretty cool that the X-box extenders can share the TV tuners properly across the network.