Windows 7 Starter Edition

[screenblaster]

I have an older P4 that I have been using to record with HDhomerun and a custom batch file plus sharing the record folder out to view on other machines. This has served me well. I have acess to all the Windows 7 SKU's so I decided to try Ultimate and the built-in Media Center. It turned out to be really CPU intensive and the .wtv format of the recorded files was not viewable by my Popcorn Hour so that was a deal breaker.

I found out about this pvr as I was researching and decided to use Windows 7 Starter. I really like the small foot print of this OS (running aroun 250MB idle) and all else appears to work well.

Except for this software (gbpbr) I get a message "Sorry, this system does not support the required VMR9 video render." I'm wondering if there is an way around this or if I should just try one of the more feature full versions of windows. I might just jump to Home Premium and see.

[whurlston]

Starter edition does not include DVD playback or streaming media support so I doubt they added any real media support at all including enhanced renderers like VMR9. I would use at least Home Premium. You can disable all the Media Center services.

[screenblaster]

Thanks. That's what I settled on. I'm still configuring the thing and will see where I get. To bad you can't just get a base OS that you add what you need to. I was hoping there was some sort of codec pack or addon. But if you just need a Internet PC for old hardware the Starter seems to be a good choice.

I might send some $$ to the mc2xml folks to get a beta of their Windows 7 MCE EPG grabber as I use terrestrial ATSC and am interested in the extra metadata.

We will see...

[KS4UA]

FWIW - I am getting the extra metadata now on mx2xml, with just the standard executable. At least I think I am.

Since it uses the Microsoft "legacy" data feed, that service upgraded by M$ a few weeks back and I started getting ATSC sub-channels info, which I wasn't getting before.

Windows 7 Media Center (in Home Premium) always had the sub-channels, but I now get it in GBPVR as well.