What is the future for WMC under Win 8?

[SJMaye]

I had no intentions of upgrading to Win 8 unless there were significant developments in MC.  As I read various reports about Win 8 MC it sounds like MS is still luke warm putting resources on it as true usage of MC is very low.  I am still looking for a single box, single environment for all media like media center, so I am not too interested in all the add-on streamer boxes. 

I find myself looking at the upcoming Ceton Q and echo.  These guys did cablecard right.  Maybe they will do the same for replacing media center?  Anyone have Pro’s and Con’s to their system?

 

[osburnfamily]

Well, my own personal feeling —The Q/Echo combo is pretty much perfection in a box if you are not a computer geek who loves to tweak his or her system all the time.  I’ve built and support many WMC HTPCs for friends and family and can tell you that there is no such thing as a truly stable dedicated HTPC.  Even the ones that sit in a basement & run for 6 months before a reboot, aren’t stable.

It’s a perception thing & the primary reason:  WAF (wife acceptance factor).

While it may go 6 months w/o a reboot, that one time her show doesn’t record properly and you do need a reboot, you’re hearing about it for a week how she wishes she just had a DirecTV DVR or something.

How’s that different from a set-top-box that “locks up”?  Perception.  If she can hit the power button on the cable box and turn it off and on, and it “just works”, she thinks it’s better than the HTPC.  Even though it still is an embedded Windows install with MediaCenter, with the firmware style of the “Q” system, you pretty much will get that same STB experience.  Nothing to screw up accidently and she doesn’t know any different.

As to Windows 8 upgrade – my thought is this:  For $40 bucks, including the much bemoaned WMC Feature Addon, why NOT upgrade to Windows 8?  If for nothing else, it secures your home theatre infrastructure from further depreciation and will set you up to (potentially) easily transition to a new Metro-Style MediaCenter (if it ever comes), or the next gen Xbox (8?) extenders.

What will I personally do?  I’ll be upgrading my PCs regardless for that price.  Any friend or family HTPC requests will get the Q/Echo combo once it’s officially out; and, I will be at-least getting Echos for the remaining TVs that don’t have a STB or HTPC or Xbox on them.  AND, if the Q/Echo is able to stream blurays from the Q to the Echos, I just may end up replacing my HTPC; but, I’m not holding my breath on that one.

[SJMaye]

Your issues seem to be the same as mine.  I am not concerned with stability.  I am used to the qwerks of Win7 MC and always find great help here at Missing Remote when I have something I don’t understand.  The part of Q and Echo that lure me is greater media integration and streaming of internet content.

As for me I would guess as Q and Echo come out the may be prohibitively high to begin with, so I may wait.   In the mean time I will also wait to read more about Win8 MC before upgrading.  I would like to see if they are going to invest anytime in MC or just repackage what I already have.  They can keep the Metro interface.  I like MC just the way it is.  Only thing I have seen I like as much is XBMC.  I would switch in a minute if it could use my ceton card to record.

[osburnfamily]

If your channels are copyfree, xbmc has a plugin that works with the ceton. I’ve tried it and it works but charter is moving too many channels to copy once or copy never in my area.

[oliverredfox]

[quote=SJMaye]

In the mean time I will also wait to read more about Win8 MC before upgrading.  I would like to see if they are going to invest anytime in MC or just repackage what I already have.  They can keep the Metro interface.  I like MC just the way it is.  Only thing I have seen I like as much is XBMC.  I would switch in a minute if it could use my ceton card to record.

[/quote]

While METRO seems to be a love it or hate it type experience, and WMC seems to be pretty much just the same at 7’s, I’m surprised there isn’t more talk about the under the hood aspects of Win 8.  I’d posted link about music recording software performane in Win8 under the $40 upgrade deal thread ( http://blog.cakewalk.com/windows-8-a-benchmark-for-music-production-applications/ if you hadn’t seen it) and it appears that there are some decent changes to the kernel from their benchmarks.  I’m curious to see if the kernel changes make any difference with any of the software I run on my HTPC.  I’ll be taking a sit back and wait approach as my Win7 system is “stable” (no reason to tempt fate), but I do wonder if the OS overhead reduction of Win8 will be of benifit (Theorectically, a smaller OS footprint could mean more HTPC software overhead, but I have no clue if that’ll make a real world difference.)

 

edit:  I’d love to see a resource benchmark comparision of a same machine running Win7 vs Win8 doing stuff like recording 4 hd streams (or more), background re-encoding, Blu-ray playback, etc to see the differences.

[Crim]

Media Center in 8 is just the same as 7MC, MS hasn’t made any changes or updates. At this point I personally think of it more as dead but I will continue to use it until I find a good replacement.

I kind of wish Media Browser would just go for it and develop it as a frontend media center of it’s own instead of tying it into Media Center.

[osburnfamily]

I beg to differ on the changes to MC8.  They added the CC button to the 2’UI!!!  That alone is worth the $40 bucks! 

[karaokeamerica]

Is there an article/resource somewhere that has a concise list of the features/changes from Win7 MCE to Win8 MCE?

I have heard rumors like they won’t play ripped DVD’s anymore and things like that. Does anyone know? I have hundreds of DVD’s ripped to my Win7 MCE that work great! I don’t want to lose that if I upgrade!

Also does anyone know if there are any enhancements to playing BR rips? Is there a good solution within MCE to play BR disks/rips?

Thanks!

[osburnfamily]

Windows 8 without the MediaCenter “Feature AddOn” will no-longer play DVDs natively.  VLC, TMT, PowerDVD, etc, will all still be able to play them w/o issue.  This is due to the removal of the necessary codecs (Mpeg2 & DolbyDigital).

However, if you have installed the Media Center feature addon, that process also includes the codecs necessary to play ripped DVDs, just like you would in Windows 7 Media Center.

I can confirm this works as I do not have any extra software or dvd players installed (no VLC, ffdshow, TMT, PowerDVD, WinDVD)… just Media Center feature addon, and I added my ripped DVDs folder to my “Movies” library.  They are all Video_TS Folder / VOB structure, and they show up and playback just fine.

As to Bluray integration– none that I can see.  It handles M2TS files the same way it did with Win7/7MC (as in, it can play them as long as the audio isn’t an HD Audio format).  As for BD Menus & folder structure…  no go there either.  You’ll still need TMT or PowerDVD.

[SJMaye]

Thanks for all the replies.  Sorry for coming back so late, but I no longer get automated emails about replies to my posts.  Anyone know what is wrong?

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