OMFG MCE RUUUUULES!

Ultra_Extreme

Ultra_Extreme

Ultra_Extreme

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Joined
22 Aug 2004
Posts
9,204
Well i was quite the skeptic, i'll admit it. MS launches a new incarnation of their OS, one that monopolises a whole PC for the pure persuit of getrting media onto your telly, whoopdi-doo, i can do that with TV-Out. So i sit, blissfully unaware of the features im missing...until one fateful day.

The members Market always swallows cash, so many good deals, so little time, sigh. Rarely though has it prompted me to buy two mobo/CPU/Ram bundles in a single week. Unfortunately i just couldnt resist the temptation of splashing 300 notes on an athlon 3400 system and subsequently a 3.2 P4 LGA775 setup, i mean i was going from a 500mhz k6 that i had been lumbered with since my car crash back in feb :(

So what to do with the spare rig? Build it up and sell it? Nah no fun. so i put the P4 to work as a file server and main net rig, hooking it up with 1.3Tb of storage and i take the plunge and plonk Win XP MCE on the Athlon.....oh.....my.....god!!!

I'm instantly bowled over by the visual presentation of it on my 28" widescreen SD TV, colours are crisp and text is more than readable, less so from the standard desktop for sure, but in the MCE prog its just awesome! With only a cronky usb mouse plugged in i can quickly select any track or video file effortlessly, queue items up, use a TV friendly version of messenger and stream media from across my home network!!!

So good in fact was my MCE experience, that today i went out and got ripped off on a logitech cordless desktop s510 media remote set. This consists of a mouse, slick keyboard and most importantly, just about the best remote ive ever used. Once setup in a coupla simple steps i now soley have a uni-directional wireless remote giving me full contol over terabytes of media, output in S-Video gloriously onto my widescreen and with crystal clear sound ringing out in 5.1 through my X-FI + Creative Gigaworx setup....i am one very, very happy man, VERY. It's like the best toy ever. And it's not even hooked up to my 360 yet....

Get MCE get it NOW!!!

/rant
 
MC needs improving.

Can't Fast forward or rewing AVI's like a DVD player. Just 30 sections.
My Music is terribly slow.
Ability to insert external programmes/plug ins.
Easier configuration of IR codes with different applications
Eject button doesn't work.
Built in Xvid/Divx/mpeg DVD decoding and scaling.
 
I took the plunge and turned my rig into a media centre one with the windows vista beta. I love it. The problem with vista is that its buggy as (expected cause its a beta) so last week I went out and bought myself media centre 2005 plus a remote. Im gonna get rid of my DVD player soon because with things like nividia pure video and ffshow ect dvds look a heck of a lot better through my LCD tv.
All I need now is a new HTPC case and then im sorted.
 
Iv found MCE to be fairly unreliable tbh, everytime it downloads Guide info it screws up the programe guide and i end up rescanning. It cant find E4 yet can find E4+1. I will agree when its working its great, but it simply doesnt work enough of the time for me.
 
I love MCE too, its the business, i love that my laptop can wirelessly hook up with my xbox 360 and with transcoding, can play divx in brilliant quality.

Its the business :)
 
Very nice o/s and easy setup compared to others in the same market. A few niggles like slow library and having to get extra DVD decoder software but overall a nice tool to use.
 
Smurfy said:
Iv found MCE to be fairly unreliable tbh, everytime it downloads Guide info it screws up the programe guide and i end up rescanning. It cant find E4 yet can find E4+1. I will agree when its working its great, but it simply doesnt work enough of the time for me.
Click to expand...
That's possibly because when it was released, E4 was an encrypted channel and E4+1 didn't exist. It was setup to ignore E4 for this reason.

If you google about, there's something you need to delete from the registry and hey presto, it finds E4. Are you running all the latest updates? Because it's probably sorted in those, and the 'screwing up of the program guide' hasn't happened to me for ages, so I asssume that was fixed too.
 
Yes you have to have all the rollups, mine finds e4 no problem and you can install plugins, you have to search the net and i'm sure i was fastforwarding the other day and you can adjust the skip time using tweakmce etc.

I tried third party apps, gbpvr, mediaportal, and another one which i forget the name of, i paid for showshifter and it was good, but none were anywhere near as good as mce2005.

I use twin dvb-t tuners and my listings work great. The only anoyance i have is that the channel setup is a bit delicate and if you try to change things it can end up completely messed up ie a rescan. I then use Mark Sellbys mce reset tool to clean up the mess and then do a retune.

The other problem i have is it picks up too many channels, it picks up all the welsh ones and i dont want them but it puts them at the top of the list so i have to reorder them all.
 
My 2 main gripes with MCE are the EPGuide - it doesn't download all the listings for all the channels it finds. Example; it will find BB1 Wales, which gives a choppy playback due to reception. BBC1 however, is fine. But I can only select the TV Listings for BBC1 Wales :rolleyes:

And the inability to change hardly any settings by default. Everything is a hack or a tweak.

Also, I'd like to be able to 'zoom' to a custom level in videos too, like Zoom Player where the mousewheel will zoom in/out that will allow you to view the movie filling more of a 4:3 screen, or even a 16:9 screen for that matter.
 
It only gives you listings for the channels on the transmitter you chose. Is it possible the BBC1 (non-wales) is coming from a different transmitter? I doubt that they'd bother transmitting two versions of the same channel from one place.
 
i have been thinking about setting up a htpc in my bedroom. think this has made my mind up! now to find some old bits to use!
 
csmager said:
It only gives you listings for the channels on the transmitter you chose. Is it possible the BBC1 (non-wales) is coming from a different transmitter? I doubt that they'd bother transmitting two versions of the same channel from one place.
Click to expand...

You're probably quite right, but it only gives me 1 transmitter to choose from.

I can understand why it's doing it, but there is a better way of doing it IMO.


Also, does anyone get a TVGuide for More4? I get More4+1, but not the normal one :confused:
 
Joe42 said:
Does it? :confused:
Click to expand...
I suppose that can be interpreted two ways. What is meant is that when you purchase 'Windows Media Center Edition 2005', you get the Media Center Application & XP Pro (rebranded to say MCE all over it).
 
I thought MCE was Xp home with a fancy media centre gui bit...?

Does it support domains and such like xp pro?
Not that i would need it to...
 
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