Microsofts best effort thus far
I am not sure how many of you out there own a Windows based media center. Personally, I have been watching TV through my PC for a few years now and have finally come to the following painful conclusion.
Generic PC hardware & Windows just isn’t up to the task.
I am not laying blame with Microsoft or deriding their products, it’s just that it is virtually impossible to design an operating system which works flawlessly regardless of the PC hardware installed. Over the years I have tried a variety of Windows Versions (XP, Vista and 7) and a heap of motherboards, TV cards etc in search of a truly reliable platform. I have yet to find it. I even tried integrated hardware solutions from HP, Asus etc, but they were always compromised in someway with either poor audio/video output options or missing a vital component of some kind.
To give you an insight into the types of problems you are likely to encounter here are a few of the most annoying I have encountered just relating to sleep mode:
- Media Center fails to come out sleep mode to record a show.
- Media Center loses a vital piece of hardware like a TV card, network card, sound card etc when resuming from sleep mode.
- Media Center really slow to resume from sleep (Yes, I am looking at you Vista!). A real pain when your favourite show has just started!
- Unable to detect or output picture to your TV, projector or screen upon waking from sleep.
I know the techies among you will say “all those are driver issues which can be resolved by “x” solution. “. I say, maybe, maybe not. Personally, after 3 years I really cannot justify spending another hour of my life trawling help forums for obscure solutions to these types of problems. I just want a media center which works as reliably as my toaster.
Here is my list of what makes a good Media Center:
- From the time it is switched to being usable is less than 25 seconds
- Anyone can use it without consulting a “how to” guide.
- It can view and record live HD TV.
- It has enough room to store all my music, photos and recorded TV programs.
- It supports most popular image and sound formats.
- I can back it up easily
- It connects to the internet securely and updates guides and internal software automatically.
- Everything just works all the time
Apples first foray into the Media Center Market
I hate to say it, but I think it will take a proprietary manufacturer like Apple or Sony to get it right!
Proprietary manufacturers like Apple have a massive advantage over Microsoft in this space. They have total control over the components in their machines and just about the best interface designers money can buy. Meanwhile Microsoft must contend with trying to be all things to all people.
Current products like the Apple TV are a good start, but missing an integrated HD TV tuner for recording live television . Possibly the best proprietary solution at the moment comes from Sony with their recent release of the PlayTV. This device is actually an add-on to the Play Station 3 which allows users to view and record HD TV through the PS3′s visual interface. Add this to the inbuilt media center software, easily upgraded hard drive, and arguably the best Blu Ray player on the market and at last there is a true integrated Media Center contender in the market place. Oh, and I nearly forgot it is not bad for playing games either!
The Sony PS3 with PlayTV
In the very near future Windows Media Center PC is going on eBay. I suspect that I will be able to buy a PS3 with PlayTV, Remote control and upgraded HDD and still have change from my media center PC! For those of you interested I will follow up with another post stating whether or not I have made a big mistake!!
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i would have to agree in part with all that….microsoft will never ever get it right..maybe they should stop thinking about making massive profits and make a product THAT WORKS without a security update every few weeks. Maybe linux is the answer (one day soon at least) cost $0, works
, doing everything everyone wants 
more likely, everyone using linux 
wont happen, sony or apple getting it right 100%?? maybe but id put money on 98% because they wont have it do EVERYTHING EVERYONE wants for the copyright or something!
so goodluck to the things we want becoming availiable soon
Congrats on writin something actually worth reading. I’m use dto getting a different sort of mail from companies and I suspect this is the first time I’ve recieved one that was actually worth more than the time to click on it.
I’ll have to check out all of yours in future:)
Did someone say Linux, ha! ha! Try to get things working in Linux, what you say once they work no more tweaking! I had Linux for years mate and it never works unless you are a grade A programmer. I consider myself quite an expert in programming and Linux was a NIGHTMARE! It never works and when you want things to work you have to do two to three hours of programming. That’s only to get a small part of the problem solved, after that you got to look at repositories and everything that goes with that. Swap to Windows 7, the greatest OS ever. Yes, it even beats that time wasting Linux. Windows 7 has a great media center, check it out at Microsoft. As far as the driver problems, Windows 7 has fixed all of these. One point to remember about driver issues is compatibility, I think you are using drivers that are not compatible with any version of Windows. As for Linux, harp! harp! try and get drivers to work on that. Ha! Ha! Ha! Linux, you people make OS users LAUGH! LAUGH! LAUGH!
Tivo is the best HD TV recorder and player out there by miles, best user interface, and yes, it is based on Linux, albeit heavily customized and users can’t mod the system. OK, it doesn’t have a DVD or BluRay player built in, but they are easy add-ons to your environment. And as for ability to get TV shows or movies from the Internet onto your TV, well USB memory keys work fine.
I have been down the Linux path also with LinuxMCE and MythBuntu. Both gave me heaps of hardware grief and were rejected by family as too hard to use. With regard to Windows 7, I have been using it for at least 6 months and although it is the best so far I am afraid it is still a long way from perfect. The final straw occurred upon my return from holidays I fired up the Media Center only to discover it would no longer connect to my wireless network after working faultlessly for 6 months. I tried system restore, new drivers, disable/enable hardware, pulling out the card and replacing, disabling firewalls & Anti Virus all to no avail. I then popped in a live Linux CD and got connected immediately – Aaaargh!! After another 4 hours of my life F%&*ing about with a problem which should not exist!!
The writer’s criticisms are valid, however PS3 as a media centre (yes, centre, I’m Australian!) is limited in a number of important ways. PlayTV, although a dual tuner, is limited to recording only one programme (Aussie) at a time wheras on WMC, TV can be recorded on both tuners simultaneously. PS3 also uses the FAT32 file system meaning that if you wish to store your recorded TV on an external drive, you can only transfer files of 2GB size, about 1/2 hour of HD show. Additionally, PS3 plays back many audio and video file types but it’s compatibility is by no means comprehensive wheras the WMC can play back any file you have a codec for. So the consumer must choose between WMC’s flexible features versus the PS3′s ease of use.
[...] 3 as a Media Centre? Yes Please! In this previous post I vented my unhappiness with the world of generic pc hardware and Windows Media Center. As stated [...]
informative post. I hope you keep on writing such interesting stuff
Hey I was just viewing your website on my Samsung Phone and I was wondering how well it will work on the new ipad coming out . Fleeting thought…. Anyway thanks!