Long time WMC user seeks your input

[SJMaye]

I have been using Windows Media Center as my HTPC since 2007.   It has been great, but with the lack of development it has not kept up with the times.  The main reason I love and have loved WMC is the single environment no matter what you want to watch or listen to.  One environment, one remote.  Even when using extenders.  Actually I am still happy with WMC with the exception of lack of streaming services within.  The Netflix app is good.  But slick, full featured apps for other streaming services are missing and MS appears to lack interest.

So, in short what is important to me is OTA TV, streaming services, whole house solution within a single environment (no input switching for the wife) and a single remote.  Right now the only off the shelf solution seems to be the Tivo Roamio, but I am not excited about the monthly fees.  

I have not looked for a new solution for a while and would appreciate your feedback on what really fits that bill.  

[Techbutton]

I am in the same boat as you. I love WMC but nothing is changing, and no talk of it for Windows 10. It is important for me to keep it as simple as possible. I have extenders and a ton of white xbox 360 media remotes. I would love to get rid of the xbox 360 and just go with it on my xbox one. I use Plex as my streaming service of choice. I pulled all of my movies out of WMC months ago and have not been sad. That said my wife does not watch movies unless I am around. Mike and some others on here are starting to play with kodi and I can say I haven’t touched it since the change to kodi from xbmc but it has some good possibilities. I have my system setup with commercial cutting with MCEBuddy and moving to a share drive once commercials are cut and it has been really nice. My system is not flawless and I wish there was more to it, but I am content with Chromecast and Xbox One taking over the streaming from Plex and Media Browser I have running. 

I hope there is some news soon about the future of WMC but look at it this way, no news is good news, because it hasn’t said it won’t be there.

[Night Rider]

For me the big part of WMC was the wife acceptance factor.
I currently have a 1U server running windows 7 Ultimate & with a Silicon dust HDHomerun prime I can record HD and stream recorded content or live TV with two Xbox 360’s

[captain_video]

I guess you haven’t seen this article:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows-10-Will-Launch-in-Several-New-Versions-Leak-Suggests-475967.shtml

It appears that WMC will indeed be available in Windows 10.

I can’t speak to any of the streaming services and associated apps since I don’t use them, but there are lots of other platforms for watching and recording OTA TV as well as watching movies.  With SageTV becoming open source, there should be some new and exciting things coming around the corner on that platform.  Kodi works great with the new HDHomeRun Live TV add-on.  MythTV has been around for quite some time and may offer some of the solutions you seek.  NextPVR, Media Portal, and probably a few others may also offer what you’re looking for.  For OTA TV, you are not limited to just WMC.

[jennyfur]

Surprise! I’m still around. And I’m in the same boat as the OP here, been contemplating my options over the past couple weeks. Think I’ve finally made a decision.

First off, since I’m bumping an old post, just wanted to update this for anyone coming in later since the post before mine is a bit misleading. As of May, it was absolutely confirmed that there’s no media center in windows 10. You can even hear it from the horse’s mouth: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/wiki/insider_wintp-insider_install/frequently-asked-questions-windows-10/5c0b9368-a9e8-4238-b1e4-45f4b7ed2fb9

(use ctrl+F to find “media center” since it’s a long article)

So on to my dilema. Currently, I’m using Win 7 for MCE with an xbox 360 extender. I want to upgrade this machine to Win 10, which will cause me to lose MCE. I have a few options though.

1. I have a really old macbook pro that’s bootcamped with Win 7. It would be the perfect solution to this problem if it weren’t for the fact that it’s horribly unstable and locks up almost daily, not to mention the battery is broken so it has to stay plugged in at all times (okay the latter isn’t so much of a problem in this scenario, just an annoyance if I want to use the macbook for anything else). If it wasn’t such a POS, I would just run it as my new MCE box since I have no intention of upgrading it. Would need to save to someplace else though since it doesn’t have much hard drive space.
2. Option 2: there’s rumors of the xbox one eventually getting a DVR solution. This rumor makes enough sense to believe as they really want the xbone to be the center of your living room, also because of the HDMI passthrough cable features, along with the death of MCE. Problem with this option is the timing… who knows when this will happen. I highly doubt it will be in time for when I plan to switch to Win 10. But I didn’t bother buying an xbone in the hopes that it would do something about the lack of MCE extender capability, so waiting isn’t really a problem (unless I’d run out of time for free Win 10 while doing so).
3. Lastly, and looking to be the option I’m leaning most towards at the moment, is HDHomeRun DVR. Their kickstarter got plenty of funding, including meeting their stretch goals for Kodi and iPad support. I’d planned on buying a NAS for backup reasons anyway, and HDHomeRun DVR is supposed to be able to run off one. They list QNAP as a brand they plan to support, and I was leaning towards the TS-251 anyway (which happens to run Kodi and has hdmi out). I understand the $30 fee for EPG data, it sucks but it’s reasonable and still cheaper than what I’d pay the cable co. The only downside of this option is if I spend all this money on the necessary hardware and then option 2 (the xbone solution) actually comes to fruition at a later date. Would be taking that chance.

[jennyfur]

Hmm. Keep getting errors when I try to post and my replies aren’t showing up as the latest post, so just trying another reply from a different browser to see if that helps…

[Night Rider]

I have been looking into The Silicondust HDHomerun DVR solution.
I backed the Kickstarter campaign and am testing it out.
 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1275320038/hdhomerun-dvr-the-dvr-re-imagined

[htpc_user]

I recently ran across an Hauppauge ATSC USB tuner for the Xbox One. I wonder if that means DVR capability is coming?

[Night Rider]

yes that would be my guess.
Unfortunatly more robust tuners exist.

[Author]

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