Jason Dunn
06-09-2006, 09:00 PM
I'm a big fan of Windows Media Center, but there are a lot of things about it that need improving. I just ran into a new one this morning: I had selected four TV shows to burn to DVD, and the MCE interface has to remain open and running while the SONIC encoder transcodes the video. I had the MCE interface minimized, and I started playback of a video file I had downloaded from the ATI Web site (a high-definition "Ruby Adventure"). Once I finished watching the video, I shut down Windows Media Player 10. The audio from the video kept playing however. I waited about ten seconds, but it kept playing. That meant that somehow the instance of Windows Media Player didn't shut down properly, a fairly common occurrence I've noticed with large video files. So I did a three-finger-salute, brought up the Task Manager, and sure enough, there was an instance of wmplayer.exe. I selected it, and clicked END TASK. That killed the media player, which stopped the audio.
It also had a side effect I wasn't anticipating: the MCE interface spit up an error saying that it had lost the connection to Windows Media Player and needed to shut down. What? Down goes MCE, and of course down goes my DVD burning. I restarted MCE, hoping the SONIC encoder would have some sort of resume function that would allow it to keep going, but no such luck. I was curious to see if anything had been burned to my DVD, so I hit eject on the drive. Nothing happened. I went into My Computer and did a right-click eject on the drive - nothing. So I ended up having to do a full reboot of the PC, which always kicks off the Windows Media Connect scan. The one where I listen to 5 to 10 minutes of constant hard drive grinding as it indexes every media file, one by one. After rebooting, I was able to eject the DVD, and start the process all over again.
Windows Media Center simply has to be made more robust and bulletproof. As it is now, I'm terrified of installing any third party software on my MCE machine, for fear of destabilizing it again (especially anything with CODECS). I'm sincerely hoping the version shipping in Vista will be a vast improvement.
It also had a side effect I wasn't anticipating: the MCE interface spit up an error saying that it had lost the connection to Windows Media Player and needed to shut down. What? Down goes MCE, and of course down goes my DVD burning. I restarted MCE, hoping the SONIC encoder would have some sort of resume function that would allow it to keep going, but no such luck. I was curious to see if anything had been burned to my DVD, so I hit eject on the drive. Nothing happened. I went into My Computer and did a right-click eject on the drive - nothing. So I ended up having to do a full reboot of the PC, which always kicks off the Windows Media Connect scan. The one where I listen to 5 to 10 minutes of constant hard drive grinding as it indexes every media file, one by one. After rebooting, I was able to eject the DVD, and start the process all over again.
Windows Media Center simply has to be made more robust and bulletproof. As it is now, I'm terrified of installing any third party software on my MCE machine, for fear of destabilizing it again (especially anything with CODECS). I'm sincerely hoping the version shipping in Vista will be a vast improvement.