Should I Upgrade to Windows Media Center?

March 25, 2006 6:21 AM

Should I upgrade to XP Media Center?

I have Windows XP Pro, and its doing fine. I use my computer for work, finance, web design, shopping, games etc. But it won't stream videos to my XBox360 without being Media Center edition. Is Media Center worth it? Is it an improvement on XP Pro? Will many things break if I upgrade?

posted by wibbler to computers & internet (11 comments total)

XP Media Center is a "superset" of Windows XP Professional; everything in Pro is in Media Center.

You'll get real value from it by installing a TV tuner. If you're hoping to stream videos to your 360, those videos need to be in a supported format (i.e. WMV or MPG, generally). You can't stream Divx/Xvid to the 360 Extender without running some (IMHO) hokey software.

But I'll tell you this: I've got a Media Center PC with two TV tuners (pulling in basic cable) and one ASTC tuner (to pull down hi-def broadcasts over-the-air from Chicago). It streams those recordings to two 360s in the house, and the wife LOVES it (and, hey, I get to play Fight Night every now and than).
posted by Merdryn at 7:00 AM on March 25, 2006

It's not possible to upgrade to Windows Media Center except by buying a new machine. It's only available to OEMs, so you can't buy it off the shelf and upgrade your current computer, you'd have to buy a new computer with WMC already installed.
posted by camcgee at 7:57 AM on March 25, 2006

XP Media Center is a "superset" of Windows XP Professional; everything in Pro is in Media Center.

Might seem pedantic, but:

While you can access network resources on a work network or a domain, you cannot join a Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 PC to the domain. PCs running Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 are designed specifically for home use. Windows XP Professional features, specifically Domain Join and Cached Credentials (Credentials Manager for logons) are not included. As a result, you will be prompted for your logon user name and password to access network resources after you reboot or log back on to the PC. In addition, file shares or network resources that are set to require a domain-joined PC for access will not be available. Remote Desktop and Encrypting File System support are still included.

From here. But I doubt you really need to do that.
posted by ed\26h at 7:59 AM on March 25, 2006

It's not possible to upgrade to Windows Media Center except by buying a new machine.

You can buy the Media Center software from Ebuyer.
posted by ed\26h at 8:03 AM on March 25, 2006

Wait for January and Vista to come out. Vista Premium will have the media center features among all of the bells and whistles.

Of course, if you want that functionality today, go get MCE from ed/26h's link. Technically, you're violating MS's SLA if you're not an OEM or solution provider, but they have bigger fish to fry.
posted by birdherder at 8:46 AM on March 25, 2006

MCE is somewhat unreliable. See this blog entry for one person's anecdotal evidence. Here is a snarky comment from the mini microsoft blog about MCE reliability.
posted by crazycanuck at 9:11 AM on March 25, 2006

I upgraded my PC to MCE to stream video to my Xbox 360. As has been mentioned, you can buy an OEM version through any number of online retailers (Google "Windows Media Center Edition OEM") although technically you're not supposed to. I say bollocks to that, I see no reason why MCE isn't off-the-shelf software, except to prevent a ton of tech support calls from people who install it on systems that don't meet the minimum requirements or wonder why they "can't watch TV" on a system with no tuner card, etc. It'll cost you about $100 to buy.

But, as also has been mentioned, unless you're encoding your own videos, the majority of internet-based videos that you're likely to download via torrents or whatnot are going to be Divx or Xvid encoded and won't stream to the 360, which makes it a hobbled solution at best.

Aside from video streaming, it IS kind of a kick to be able to log on to MCE's "Online Spotlight" feature on the 360 that contains a lot of specially-formatted websites from the likes of Comedy Central and MTV to view video segments. There are also a couple of movie-on-demand services too, but I haven't really tried those out.
posted by robbie01 at 9:14 AM on March 25, 2006

Technically, you're violating MS's SLA if you're not an OEM or solution provider, but they have bigger fish to fry.

Not true, and not to be snarky, but SLA = service level agreement. :P MS relaxed its OEM rules almost a year ago to include any "system builder", and if you're building / upgrading your own machine, congratulations, you're a system builder in Microsoft's eyes, and you can go with their blessing. More info.

MCE is somewhat unreliable.

This sort of statement is apocryphal, and you quoted a nearly two year old blog entry from some random guy, who hasn't had the benefits of the service packs / updates that have been made since then. Right now, Windows XP (and MCE, which is just XP Pro minus the bits mentioned above and including extra services to handle recording) is fully capable of being a rock-solid, 100% stable operating system. What makes it unstable is 99.44% of the time attributable to the user -- installing beta drivers, not scanning for spyware, not updating to signed versions of drivers, etc. My MCE machines have always been the most stable of my computers, as well they should be, since a computer that records TV should behalf as realiably as any other piece of consumer electronics.

As for waiting for Vista... If you want to record digital cable (hi-def or premium from your US cable provider), you can't do it with XP MCE, you'll need Vista and a certified tuner. Don't blame MS for that requirement, either, blame the content owners who wouldn't let us have our content at all if it were totally up to them. There is some misunderstanding about whether you'll need a full-on certified PC to do it (that really hasn't been firmed up yet). Honestly, most people don't need digital cable; basic cable and their off-air ATSC (hi definition digital television broadcasts "over the air", free from your local stations) will supply them with endless hours of programming.

But, really, if all you want to do is occassionally stream content from your PC to a television, skip all this stuff (it's really meant to do MUCH more than just stream video to an XBox) and buy Buffalo's media streamer, or some other similar product.
posted by Merdryn at 1:02 PM on March 25, 2006

I should update to say that reliability problems are attributable to the user OR the system builder (NOT, as many people are quick to assume, Microsoft). Dell is well known for installing all kinds of crap on their machines; whenever I buy a machine, step one is FORMAT, re-install Windows.

And, no, I don't work for MS. But I DO love my Media Center machine (a Gateway, and formerly a home-built machine), and I can rely on it to perform as I expect, 100% of the time. Zero problems.
posted by Merdryn at 1:06 PM on March 25, 2006

The latest version of MCE acheives "stability" by deliberately restarting the media center application once a day. Good enough, perhaps, but at its heart, a huge kludge.

That said, there are things to like about MCE. The MyMovies plugin is cool -- it lets you play back ripped CDs from your hard disk. Unfortunately, it can't stream them to extenders, including the 360.
posted by Good Brain at 3:28 PM on March 25, 2006

My Movies certainly can; just rip your DVDs as WMV files. You can do so, and preserve the surround channels while you do it, which will play back in full fidelity on the 360.

And it's not the whole application that restarts, just a portion of the services, in an effort to force garbage collection (easier than having the services team rewrite everything). The shell and its services are managed code.
posted by Merdryn at 5:00 PM on March 25, 2006