Microsoft Media Center 2005 Reviewed

Thomas Hawk writes "Microsoft is set to release their new Media Center 2005 by none other than Bill Gates himself in Los Angeles tomorrow. In advance of this announcement, the New York Times (registration required) is running an article on the new product today. The article says that the quality of the MCE television has generally been received as inferior to rival and competitor TiVo. I wrote a review on the new MCE 2005 last week called MCE 2005, Underwhelmed. I'm offering continuing media coverage of MCE 2005."

What news, what news.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets see:

Tivo --- Cheap, works, easy to use, easy to setup.
MythTV --- Cheap, works, easy to use, difficult to setup.
MCE --- Expensive, works, easy to use, modertly difficult to setup.

Hmm...

So MS is saying that I can spend a thousand dollars on a PC, pay them around 150 dollars for the software, subject myself to DRM, and then risk getting my Television infected with spyware, viruses, and worms?

WERE CAN I SIGN UP?!!!!!

As much as I hate to admit it . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

. . . Windows XP Media Center Edition is pretty cool. My roommate purchased an HP computer for college that came with MCE, though he didn't even try to set it up last year, this year he's gotten it working.

We've used it, so far, to record South Park episodes and Comedy Central's Secret Stash. There's nothing better than going off to Intro to Philosophy class after just having heard a 5-minute unbleeped tirade from an angry black man. We've now got it set to record every show of several series, and it's really nice to be able to start playing a show at a moments notice.

I'm kind of jealous that he's got it, actually. I'd like to turn my spare computer into a Linux box, but I'd also like to record shows on it, if such thing were possible. I have no idea if any equivalent to MCE exists on Linux.

Re:More Features

[garcia]

A recorder from TiVo, by contrast, can be bought for less than $100 after rebates, although it has a fee of $12.95 a month, which the Windows system does not.

This is EXACTLY why I went with a Tivo. Price. $50 after rebate and it's noiseless. I don't think about it and I don't worry that it will crash.

I was seriously thinking about buying a machine to do MythTV which was my first choice but I always found myself put off by the time/money investment only to have yet another machine running in the house sucking electricity (I am VERY interested in seeing a power consumption comparison between a low-end MythTV machine, Tivo, and Microsoft solution).

Anyway. Building and running a mythTV box, while well within my ability, was just too much of a hassle compared to clicking on CircuitShitty and picking it up at the desk 20 minutes later.

YMMV.

Can it join a domain?

[rsilvergun]

As I understand it, MCE is just pro with added junk. If it retails for the Same as Home, could be a nice, cheap way to upgrade to Pro.

Bad review

[Anonymous Coward]

" Although the product allegedly will support the ATI HDTV Wonder card it is my understanding that this card only supports OTA (over the air) HDTV broadcasts. WTF?" - From the submitter review

What an uninformed statement. This the fault of cable and sat companies. The htpc communities have screamed their heads off about for awhile now but with the new broadcast flags, I believe we will see the death of HDTV recording (on pc, too easy to share) all together. Unless there is a solid shared standard (with agreement of the copyright holders of course) you will never see anything from HDTV cable and sat on your pc.

If any one is wondering, NO you can not just record the component signal. The pci bus has proven to be to slow to handle raw High definition signals. Hell why do you think pci video card are practically dead?

Re:As much as I hate to admit it . . .

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

MythTV www.mythtv.org

I can even watch TV from across a network with it, using KnoppMyth as the frontend.

XBMC is million times better..

[dwipal]

I use XBOX Media Center (http://www.xboxmediacenter.com) since a month now, and it is WAYYY better than whatever MS will be offering, the main advantage being u dont get stuck with M$ software. My XBMC works with the iBook and a Windows XP desktop that is kinfof like my "Media Server" lying somewhere in the bedroom.

Its all connected to the network wirelessly, and works exceptionally well. U can manage the songs using iTunes and play those on ur home theater connected through XBMC. There are also Optical Audio and Component Out kits available for the XBOX and it works really well. It has the mplayer media player which has all the nasty codecs which can play just about anything.
Also, xbox dosent make the noise that a regular PC will make. It now also supports 1080i DVD playback with DTS audio which is just what I need.

M$ has a media center extender for their xbox, but it only works with their shitty Media center PCs which is wayyy overpriced and too "closed".

As far as my XBOX can do everything i ever want (of course, except the HD-Tivo functions, which i would like leaving to Tivo), spending 150$ for the XBOX just makes too much sense. I would always prefer to have all the media stored on some PC but remotely accessible from a small non-noisy set-top box connected to the TV (like the XBOX).

Re:What news, what news.

[lakeland]

I don't think MythTV can be described as cheap. A VIA based MythTV box, using a Hauppauge 250 in an aesthetically acceptable case will set you back about $600. That's more than enough to pay for Tivo.

Of course, this is because certain component manufacturers are suffering from low demand, or are milking the market (you choose). For instance a case is $100 but you can buy a complete DVD player (including power supply) for less than that - and it will look better. Just throw out the inside and plug the VIA MB in... Similarly, the hauppauge with its ivy tuner costs more than the entire TiVo, despite the TiVo including an ivy tuner!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Noisy Hard Drive = No Thanks

[Fnkmaster]

The noise you hear from a PC is at least 80% from the CPU fan, power supply fan and case fan. A fanless PC is extremely quiet - hard drives do make noise, but it's quiet enough that you're not terribly likely to hear a proper, low noise harddrive in a living room unless you put your ear up right next to the box it's in.

But yes, in general, these things would be much better if they used lower power CPUs with heatpipes and fanless power supplies. In fact, more PCs in general should be designed this way as I can't stand the humming of fan noise anymore (guess I'm just getting older).

Decisions, Decisions...

[Anonymous Coward]

So I have a first-generation Tivo, and have been considering an upgrade to something else so I can play MP3s from my home theatre, since the first-generation boxes can't connect to a WiFi network.

Right now my decision is between a Tivo Series 2 and an MCE 2005 box. After thinking it over, I have to say it doesn't seem to make sense to invest extra money in a MCE system. If I want to record shows, for example, that means I have to leave my PC on 24/7, or try and remember to keep in on while the shows I want to watch are recording. What happens if I go on vacation for a couple weeks? I'm just supposed to keep my PC on that whole time?

Between that issue, and the MCE recording quality problems already discussed in this thread, I'm heavily leaning in favor of the Tivo Series 2. Am I missing something, or does using a PC to record video just not make a whole lot of sense?

Crash-o-matic

[pair-a-noyd]

I just spent a few days in Houston Memorial Herman Hospital where they have a sort of interesting setup.
The old TV's are gone, they have flat screens on a boom that you can pull down to your face and watch TV on, surf the net, etc..
My complaint with it was that it's credit card driven, you get about 10 channels for free but they are all bullcrap channels, women's talk shows, soaps, "The Aquarium Channel" and other useless nonsense.
If you want to watch anything else you have to swipe your credit card in a slot on the side to activate the half way decent channels or get on the net. The proxy is heavily censored/nannied and you can't do much more than go to disney.com and other 4 year old level crap. Any site with naughty words are off limits.

Not having a credit card, I was screwed until they caused me some extreme pain, I filed a complaint and they kissed my ass for the rest of my stay which included turning on all the channels.. (not worth the pain though!)

Anyway, the thing was crashing every few hours, it would boot up with a Windows 2000 start up screen then go through a very lengthy new hardware detection process, rebooting numerous times as it tried to detect and install all the goodies. It is a touch screen and the picture was a little better than poor and just under acceptable. You can go back and forth between the net and TV by touching the screen. Typing on it and filling in forms was a pain. There was a power, coax and an ethernet cable from the wall into the boom. I would be willing to bet that this device is insanely expensive. Considering though that they charged me about $100,000 for everything, I would think they may have put a dent in the bill for this system.

At first glance, it looked neat. After serious scrutiny, it's buggy and low quality. But most people laying in bed, in pain could care less.

Here's a link to a story all about the system.
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/technology/020104_tech _hostech.html [go.com]

Microsoft NDA / press embargo Media Center 2005

[Geartest.com]

Thomas, I found this excerpt quite interesting (emphasis added):

I wrote a review on the new MCE 2005 last week called MCE 2005, Underwhelmed.

How was it that you were able to get advance access to the software and avoid violating confidentiality agreements that you must have signed?

We were at a Microsoft media briefing a couple of weeks ago and were required to sign NDAs specific to the Media Center Edition 2005. The information was embargoed until the October 12 official launch of Windows Media Center Edition 2005. The NDAs applied to everyone, including major media with millions of readers/listeners/viewers.

In the case of the New York Times, and a few selected media outlets, I'm sure that they got special access. Either that or the NYT is violating an NDA as well, which I think is improbable.

So how has Thomas Hawk managed to get the software and write about it so far in advance without violating an NDA or otherwise going up against the Microsoft legal department?

Or is your "review" like a lot of game "reviews" where you haven't even seen or used the software, and rely on third-party accounts as the basis of your "review"?

Re:Bad review

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the PCI bus is not too slow, when you use a card like a hardware encoder board. You would have more than enough bandwidth to spare. An HDTV signal is around 10-20 Mbps, which is what an equivalent stream would be coming off of an encoder board which is streaming at about the same quality.

Also, a PC's processor would not be able to handle a raw 1080i stream anyway. At least one of today's processors.

Just my $0.02