Vista MCE

[jonb1974]

Just wondered if anyone had used this? I'll looking at building a media centre that wouldn't be required to record TV - solely for video/music/pictures. I played around with it a bit last night on my vista machine, it looks good, but I want something I can customise fully. Remove the menu items I don't want, etc. It wouldn't even prompt to resume a AVI I tested by playing and then stopping and playing again.

Am I missing something or does it just look good and not do much else?

[whurlston]

You're not missing anything. MCE is just a hint of what is possible with a PVR software. And MS, in their infinite wisdom, keeps as much control as possible out of th hands of the average user. (I do almost understand their reasons for that since I am a tech.)

Thats why we use GBPVR: much better customization.

[gazoo]

I haven't tried Vista, but MCE2005. There are plugins floating around that can do some stuff like weather, etc. However, true customization I'm not really sure about. I think it can be, but it involves registry edits of course

[jonb1974]

I've been looking around and MCE sucks. They are talking about hacks/plugs that enable you to resume play on videos already watched. There is loads on the forums. GBPVR does this with no problem. I think I will stick with GBPVR as that does everything I want out of the box.

You even have to hack MCE to get main menu items removed (I didn't even see any answers to how to do this even).

[jonb1974]

Oh, and it crashed on me and maxed out my video card fan on my PC (browsing menu).

[whurlston]

You even have to hack MCE to get main menu items removed (I didn't even see any answers to how to do this even).

That pretty much requires modifying the dlls. Not something for your average user.

[Deusxmachina]

Am I missing something or does it just look good and not do much else?

I have MCE 2005 and played with it on occasion. I don't think you're missing anything. Some reading at thegreenbutton forums should be enough to see MCE users are just spinning their wheels before they eventually switch to something else.

I went on another "let's try a bunch of other media centers" spree a couple months ago. Linux gurus aside for MythTV, my current list of recommended Windows media centers with video and not just for music is very short. In fact, the with-video list only contains two names. See my sig for details on one.