Media Center - is it losing critical mass?

[onlydarksets]

I've used a HTPC for about 6 years now, and I've run 'em all - SageTV, Beyond, Myth, GB-PVR, and, of course, Vista Media Center (formerly known as Windows Media Center). I've settled on VMC, because it allows me to record ATSC and NTSC, stream live TV from either to an extender, and, thanks to DVRMSToolbox, skip commercials automatically while watching a show without have to actually cut them out and automatically convert to a format watchable on my Zune (formerly on my WM phone).

Lately, though, it seems that progress has not only halted, but it's started to slide backwards. First, as the developer of DTb (babgvant) notes, there have been no major improvements in over 2 years (i.e., since Rollup 2 was released in October 2005). Second, after upgrading to Vista to take advantage of the one improvement - the UI, I noticed a bug that causes a good percentage of my shows (10-25%) to have an incorrect duration of only 5 minutes. Again, thanks to babgvant, there is a workaround (see here for latest version and here for steps to use DTb to automate), but Microsoft refuses to release a fix for it (they have their reasons, but I don't happen to agree with them). Third, other vendors (particularly Sage) are introducing compelling features that are drawing the development and configuration talent away from VMC. For example, jelwood (who added native DVR-MS support to mencoder and ffmpeg) has "hung up his green buttoned remote" in favor of Sage (and, with the introduction of silent 1080p hardware extenders for Sage at $199 a pop, I can't say I disagree with anything he said).

At this point, the only things keeping me with VMC are that I am familiar with how it works and I have a working setup. If I have to wipe the system clean and start over, I'll probably re-install MCE 2005 and give Sage a try, and then dual boot to Vista Ultimate. Unless, of course, MS ups the ante.

Is anyone else in the same boat?

[onlydarksets]

I've used a HTPC for about 6 years now, and I've run 'em all - SageTV, Beyond, Myth, GB-PVR, and, of course, Vista Media Center (formerly known as Windows Media Center). I've settled on VMC, because it allows me to record ATSC and NTSC, stream live TV from either to an extender, and, thanks to DVRMSToolbox, skip commercials automatically while watching a show without have to actually cut them out and automatically convert to a format watchable on my Zune (formerly on my WM phone).

Lately, though, it seems that progress has not only halted, but it's started to slide backwards. First, as the developer of DTb (babgvant) notes, there have been no major improvements in over 2 years (i.e., since Rollup 2 was released in October 2005). Second, after upgrading to Vista to take advantage of the one improvement - the UI, I noticed a bug that causes a good percentage of my shows (10-25%) to have an incorrect duration of only 5 minutes. Again, thanks to babgvant, there is a workaround (see here for latest version and here for steps to use DTb to automate), but Microsoft refuses to release a fix for it (they have their reasons, but I don't happen to agree with them). Third, other vendors (particularly Sage) are introducing compelling features that are drawing the development and configuration talent away from VMC. For example, jelwood (who added native DVR-MS support to mencoder and ffmpeg) has "hung up his green buttoned remote" in favor of Sage (and, with the introduction of silent 1080p hardware extenders for Sage at $199 a pop, I can't say I disagree with anything he said).

At this point, the only things keeping me with VMC are that I am familiar with how it works and I have a working setup. If I have to wipe the system clean and start over, I'll probably re-install MCE 2005 and give Sage a try, and then dual boot to Vista Ultimate. Unless, of course, MS ups the ante.

Is anyone else in the same boat?

[Jason Dunn]

Great post! I'm sort of in the same boat - I was a long time BeyondTV user, and loved how much functionality it provided. But they lacked any sort of hardware extender story, so I jumped ship to Media Center 2005. I missed the features that BeyondTV provided, but I like the whole ecosystem story better. Fast forward a few years, and there's really not much new with Media Center on Vista. Sure, there's the whole OCUR story, but it's complex and/or expensive to get that working, and my cable TV provider doesn't have cablecard anyway.

I still like being able to fire up my Xbox and watch TV that's on my Media Center PC, but I don't do it that often...

[onlydarksets]

Originally Posted by Jason Dunn

But they lacked any sort of hardware extender story, so I jumped ship to Media Center 2005.

Extenders have always been my motivator. I used Sage with the Hauppauge extenders, but that was really slllooooowwww. Then I went to MythTV, because this was before MCE had extenders, and you could hack the Xbox to run Linux. When MS came out with the extender software for the Xbox, I decided I was tired of spending all of my time trying to learn Linux, and I went with that.

However, that raises another issue with VMC - they dropped support for v1 extenders, for no apparent reason. Suddenly my 3 Xbox extenders are worthless. The only reason I didn't go immediately back to MCE2005 is that I don't really need 3 more extenders, since I had already replaced one with a 360.

Originally Posted by Jason Dunn

I still like being able to fire up my Xbox and watch TV that's on my Media Center PC, but I don't do it that often...

That's the lifeblood for me. All of our TV watching in the family room is via Xbox360. Up until Guitar Hero II, I didn't even own a game for it!