Windows 7 Media Centre Thread

wolvers

wolvers

wolvers

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I installed Windows 7 today and obviously I was keen to try out the new improvements made to Media Centre.

First off I wanted to see what the new LiveTV features are like, particularly support for HD channels and multiple tuners. First try I got nothing as it doesn't have the drivers for my HVR-4000 satellite card so I installed the Vista ones that I had and it seemed to go ok. Also, I made sure that I had the Nvidia driver for Windows 7 installed.

Once into the set up it was really slow but it eventually configured itself no problem. I was made up to see that not only was the BBCHD channel working perfectly and utilising hardware decoding but was also receiving Dolby Digital too and my HDAV sound card was happily sending it to my amp without any fuss at all. :)

bbchdwindows7vu2.jpg


If you are also trying this out please post your screenshots and thoughts/experiences here. I'll post more screenshots soon.
 
I haven't tried live TV yet

- pleased that AAC us finally supported, I can now access my music in both Itunes and WMP without additional codecs
- disappointed no native support for playback of Bluray
 
I'd love to, but its too much effort to get my htpc running on 7 just for it to "age out" because its a beta...

Love to see your progress though :)
 
I'm a bit stuck now as I can't do any more testing until my new back up drive arrives tomorrow.

In the mean time I found this little review of 7MC. Even though it's from a previous build I don't think any of it has changed;
http://www.wegotserved.co.uk/2008/10/28/windows-7-media-center-revealed/

Some nice looking additions there. I read some where that it downloads meta data for your movies too, like media portal and the plugins that you can get for VMC.
 
I'm going my testing on a spare machine that I have. So far with media centre my thoughts are that it looks a bit nicer (like the music wall) but this release is more of an evolution of what was already there rather than a revolution. It's ironed out a view of my nits ie no H.264, couldn't set up separate library locations for different types of media, having to make registry changes to get the DVD library to show etc but I've yet to really go wow about anything.
 
cram said:
- disappointed no native support for playback of Bluray
Click to expand...

There wont be, an agreement between microsft and the controllers of HDCP. Initalliay they weren't going to let Microsoft enable Hd copyright, which would have meant the end of HTPC's

Or something along those lines, it was before vista came out
 
wolvers69 said:
What about support for multiple tuners?..............oh hang on I tried that last night and all I got was a eye full of BSODs!! :(

Liking the media centre gadget though. :)
Click to expand...


I'm not really big on the TV stuff to be honest. I don't use it a lot - and all that was in the TV Pack.

Agreed on the gadget though - also like the music wall.

Noticed that it can play MTS file natively so may play around later with an un protected movie only blu ray to see if that is playable. I'd really like to be able to ditch mymovies and Arcsoft TMT
 
Does anyone know how to get rid of random folders which vista has added to the videos section?

I've looked in WMP and its not there.

Its monitors two folders TV and also an old vista partition as well which is very weird.

Any registry hacks?

sid
 
Can someone test if AAC Losless (Apple Losless) works natively in 7? I suspect not but since it's part of AAC family maybe it will? :).
 
Meatball said:
Can someone test if AAC Losless (Apple Losless) works natively in 7? I suspect not but since it's part of AAC family maybe it will? :).
Click to expand...

I can try it for you but you'll have to host a file for me somewhere as I don't use AAC.

Some more screen shots. Sorry they're not in full screen as it won't let me print screen and I can't be bothered to find a work around;

New music wall when playing choooons!

7mcwallcr7.jpg


The new info bar for TV (shows Dolby Digital on BBCHD :))

7mcddlp0.jpg
 
Going to give this a bash on a spare hard drive in my media box (which is currently running VMC) as I really want the multiple tuner support. Not holding out much hope though as I've read it's full of bugs and, when I tried the TV Pack on VMC, it fell to pieces when I tried changing channel numbers around.
 
I would have like to see the dvd style menu moved to videos aswell, may be easy to enable than it was in vista but we will see.
 
I have a Nova T-500 and a Nova HD-S2 and put Windows7 on the other day to try out, primarily because I have no internet at the moment and Windows7 Media Center supports pulling EPG data over the air (which actually does work, and well).
There is a problem currently with several dual dvb-t cards that only one tuner works, definitely the case on my T-500.
Combining the channels in the EPG is a PITA, it doesn't do it automatically and I suggest you look for a 3rd party app because otherwise you'll be sitting there for ages merging channels. Changing channel numbers though hasn't been a problem at all, I always change them round as I don't like the default listing, plus I remove most of the ones I'll never watch.
The H264 codec that comes with it doesn't appear to have GPU acceleration, or at least not for my system, I have a 3700+ with a nvidia 7300GS and BBC HD audio is fine, but video is choppy. The CyberLink H264 codec though decodes it all with no problems.
Coming from MCE2005 it's quite different, but mostly in a good way, certain layout decisions, for example in the recorded tv screen you don't seem to get as much useful information displayed as you did in MCE2005. But overall I like it very much and imagine I will be moving to it when it's released. (I tried MediaPortal and it's pretty decent, but still too buggy and doesn't do TV well, W7MC wipes the floor with it IMO).
 
Watching live TV on this is a pleasure. If you have missed a bit, you can simply click back on the progress bar at the bottom as it records while you watch. Also unlike Vista, you can use the progress bar to jump to sections within prerecorded AVI. You also get the teletext stuff and interactive but it just "feels" better than Vista's and is faster to load. Also you get a gadget with it.
 
Snakedoctor said:
unlike Vista, you can use the progress bar to jump to sections within prerecorded AVI. You also get the teletext stuff and interactive
Click to expand...

Great info Snakedoctor, I'm gonna test all of this tonight. Skipping though AVI's has always been tricky in VMC.
 
Meatball said:
Can someone test if AAC Losless (Apple Losless) works natively in 7? I suspect not but since it's part of AAC family maybe it will? :).
Click to expand...

Tried one of these - got a message saying can't play a file encoded with this codec - or something to that effect
 
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