Difference between media centers?

[tres]

Hello all,

I want to run a HTPC, but on a Sempron 3000+, 2gb ram etc..

What's the difference between media center 2005 and vista media center?

I presume the first will give me better performance, but much difference?

for mp3s and avis

thank you

 

[Bomag]

If you are planning to use the MCE remote then I would go with XP MCE as it much less fiddly, on the main menu, when using a single finger its up/down/select.

Vista MCE requires you to use the left/right buttons as well which is a real pain to navigate using the remote. If you are using a mouse the it does not matter as much and you may find some use for the 'extras'.

 

[edgedemon]

Have a look at Media Portal as well, I used to run it on a Sempron before my upgrade last year. Its not perfect, but it is more configurable then MCE

 

[dave-lew99]

Vista Media Centre actually works....

I found MCE 2005 to be so unbelieveably buggy it was unusable - failed recordings, failed guide, crashing guide - at one point MCE would just bomb out when scrolling through the guide!

Vista has been (so far) much less buggy, though i still suffer from the randomly chooosing channels issue (my tuner detects 3 of every channel due to being in a location in range of 3 Tx's but i want to use a particular set as they're stronger (so i manually set the channels up to be like this) - it randomly chooses to remove them all and use the first ones it finds)

 

[m_cozzy]

I have just installed mce 2005 in place of media portal & its much more stable but yes, much less configurable also.
My main use is also avi & mp3, none of the tv stuff, have sky+ for that.

vista mce..... based on my opinion of vista, no thanks