Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005: Feature and Performance Investigation
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 12, 2004 12:19 PM EST- Posted in
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Watching Two things at Once
One of the big features of MCE 2005 is its support for up to three tuner cards. Now the tuner cards must be actually supported with MCE drivers, but you can mix and match them. The benefit of having multiple tuners is obvious: with only a single tuner if you're recording a program, you cannot change channels. With two tuners you can record one program while watching another channel and with three tuners you can record two programs while watching yet a third. Simple enough?
For our tests we used a pair of ATI eHome PCI TV tuners, which are supported under MCE 2005 with drivers from ATI.
Alongside the MCE 2005 release, NVIDIA is introducing a dual-tuner single PCI card made specifically for MCE 2005 machines as a part of their NVTV tuner card line. We could not obtain a sample for this review but we will definitely keep our eyes out for one.
MCE 2005's integration and acceptance of multiple tuners is seamless. If you have multiple tuners in your system when MCE is installed, then going through the initial TV configuration wizard will allow you to select how many tuners you would like to configure. Or, if you're not big on details, you can let the configuration wizard detect that you have multiple tuners and automatically configure them for use.
If you're adding a tuner after the fact the setup is almost as simple, you need need to take one additional step. Head into the TV settings and select Set Up TV Signal from the menu; you will then be taken to the same configuration wizard you had the first time you setup the machine and you know the drill from here.
The functionality of the additional tuners is instantly activated. If you have two tuners, Media Center will no longer complain if you have two shows set to record with overlapping times. However, attempt to record a third show and the trusty conflict manager will pop up:
The same functionality applies to having three tuners installed, but be warned,
with three tuners you're going
to want to have a reasonably fast system.
There is no support for a picture-in-picture
mode in Media Center even with
multiple tuners installed,
so
the functionality
is
limited to
recording multiple
shows
or recording while watching.
If there were a million different ways Microsoft could have implemented multituner support in Media Center they picked the one that was most seamless to the end user; it just works.
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martydee - Sunday, February 6, 2005 - link
Does anyone know if a PVR card with a hardware DVD DECODER (such as the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 350) is compatible with Windows MCE? And would a hardware decoder give any real benefits to the system over the software equivilent (i.e. nVidia DVD decoder)?louisb - Thursday, January 13, 2005 - link
mulminute - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link
My biggest use is sending music and photos to entertainment center,. Should I use MC 2004 or wait for 2005mulminute - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link
My biggest use is sending music and photos to entertainment center,. Should I use MC 2004 or wait for 2005CZroe - Sunday, October 17, 2004 - link
"Windows MCE will never be any use for people serious about video until it allows you to select what codecs you want to use for encoding from all the DirectShow codecs installed on your system. Having to use the proprietary MS stuff with all their DRM garbage is unsuitable."You're clearly one seriously misinformed individual. MCE isn't an interface to multiple video formats and types and simply wonld not function correctly if it were.
Understand this: An MCE PC has one or more TV tuners and video capture cards in it and they will function exactly like any other PC with that hardware. If you want to record in the format of your choice with an XP MCE PC, no one is stopping you. Fire up your application of choice, select your codec and complain to the software maker that they don't have their own integrated EPG and automatic scheduling capabilities. Honestly, how would you expect EVERY format to support embedded CC and on the fly sequence removal? How could you expect hardware encoding support for any directshow enabled codec? You can't just throw a pre-encoded MPEG2 stream from the hardware into any encoder and expect real time results.
glennpratt - Thursday, October 14, 2004 - link
Definately go to www.thegreenbutton.com/community I'm in the US so I don't know much about getting EPG and what not in Australia, but there are a bunch of people from around the world there. The first page load is excruciatingly slow on the site, but once you on its OK.tantryl - Thursday, October 14, 2004 - link
Quick question that again I haven't seen addressed that much. On the Best/Better etc. quailty settings, what is the average MB/hour ratio?How many hours could you store on your average 200GB (191 real GB)?
tantryl - Thursday, October 14, 2004 - link
Thanks glenn.I'm in Australia so TiVo or the like is not currently an option (although I've heard rumours it'll be here within another year). The main problem with it is the program guide.
Australia is officially supported by MCE2005, and I'm very interested in just what that means. So far it looks like no Australia specific music or movie internet services are supported, but I can't find anything to say definately either way. I'm so desperate I'm even considering ringing up Microsoft and going through the quagmire that is customer relations there. But the good thing is, I'm fairly certain (although again, not seen it in writing yet) that the program guide system will work. We only have 5 free-to-air channels and a couple of pay-tv subscription services (that are really the same service packaged differently) so it shouldn't be too hard for them to keep up to date.
Looking at the performance I'm not seeing a hugley compelling reason to go any higher than a Sempron 3100+ although that might be something that would change once I actually get my hands on it and experience it.
Hmmmm. All interesting stuff.
glennpratt - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link
jamawass - There is an IR blaster connected to the remote USB reciever. There are two ports on it, but the old remote only came with one blaster, the new one which is actually cheaper then the old one comes with two.http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?desc...
If you have one you'll understand (or a linux based competitor). The flexibility is awesome (just think about it, it's a whole computer. Not only do you have all the flexibilty advanteges of MCE, you have a full blown OS underneath) compared to a Tivo. It's also MUCH MUCH faster then a Tivo.
As for stability, it all depends on the computer you build it on. You can't tell it's a PC if all you have is the remote. Mine has run for nearly a year, nonstop. You can even put it in S3 (Suspend to ram) and it will still wake up and record when it has to, just like Tivo.
Really, HTPC serves a very different market then Tivo. It has a million more uses then Tivo + DVD Recorder.
For me I have an old high end CRT data projector in my living room, and the cheapest thing I could connect to it when I first got it was a computer. Haven't looked back, even as transcoders have gotten much better and cheaper.
jamawass - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link
How does mce control digital cable boxes for scheduled recordings? Does the remote have a built in IR blaster?