preferred OS for GB-PVR?

[johnsonx42]

I've gone with Vista Business for now (regular install, no VLite), with the k-lite codec pack standard (how do they get away with including the Cyberlink decoder in there?). So far so good, the menus and etc. certainly are smoother with EVR than they were with XP and VMR9 Custom, and the OSD popups are a bit fancier looking (though I'm not sure yet if that means better or not).

It's not perfect yet, and may or may not get hooked up to the TV in this form, but we'll see.

[gEd]

I built a new pc a few weeks ago after my old motherboard went pop. I took the decision to move from xp pro to vista business and I have been very happy with it. If I had both available for a new build. I would go with vista as long as you have 2GB ram.

I had to disable UAC and the "do you really, really, really want to delete this file" type settings during the build as they were driving me crazy. I may reenable them now things are stable.

One of the threads on avsforums suggested enabling aero as this somehow aids image quality. I have not spent any time comparing it on/off and I just leave it enabled.

[Captcol]

Interesting i might try turning aero back on, my image quality is pretty good already, I leave UAC off on all my pc's as it annoys me and my partner just uses her MAC laptop most of the time

[SLR_65]

With VMR9 Custom on my XP Pro machine the menus aren't smooth, but with Full Screen Exclusive they are just fine.

[7ore]

I run my XP-pro with EVR. I think it is installed if you install .Net 3.0 or 3.5. If not, there are other ways to install it on XP.

It works really well.

I won't install vista at home unless I absolutely have to (and then I guess it will be windows 7)...

[mvallevand]

I suppose I'm one of the old dogs not wanting to change, but I think XP Pro is very stable.

It requires less grunt than Vista, and that means to me at least that there's more grunt for GB-PVR...

I would not recommend upgrading from XP on an existing system either especially if it is stable (no quartz.dll problems here though!). For a new system since I wouldn't recommend buying anything that wasn't powerful enough to run Vista Home Premium, it seems logical to use Vista just to future proof oneself.

On the other hand for a GBPVR backend server, there are a lot of powerful off-lease systems with XP that I see locally for $90-150 that would be great for PCH and even MVP users.

Martin

[johnsonx42]

I run my XP-pro with EVR. I think it is installed if you install .Net 3.0 or 3.5. If not, there are other ways to install it on XP

I'm pretty sure that sub has mentioned that EVR works very differently on XP (I think it comes with .net 3.5), and lacks hardware acceleration. I'm not saying it doesn't work or has no benefit on XP, but clearly sub implemented it for use with Vista.

[liteswap]

I suppose I'm one of the old dogs not wanting to change, but I think XP Pro is very stable.

It requires less grunt than Vista, and that means to me at least that there's more grunt for GB-PVR...

What he said: XP Pro works for me and Vista would only demand a graphics, CPU and possibly RAM upgrade. Why bother when, in a PVR, the OS only really there to manage hardware resources rather than supply a user interface?

[Pob]

What he said: XP Pro works for me and Vista would only demand a graphics, CPU and possibly RAM upgrade. Why bother when, in a PVR, the OS only really there to manage hardware resources rather than supply a user interface?

What nobody has mentioned is the price of Vista HP - £145 (or £80 OEM).
I borrowed disks and tried Vista 32-bit & 64-bit for the 30-day 'trial' period, but I could not see anything that was worth that kind of investment. I liked the photo slideshow, but another user pointed me to an old program that does the same in XP, and I liked the 'Dreamscape' Aero add-on that enabled video wallpaper - but I have that feature in my 2004 copy of WinDVD!

It seems with most video cards now though that Vista will be needed - reading many forums seems to indicate that the ATI DXVA2 cards do not accelerate well in VMR9 or overlay. Like many I have been struggling with acceleration with my ATI 3200 / 3400 graphics, and just cannot get them working acceptably in PVRX2 on XP. They do work perfectly with acceleration in XP VMR7 though in any app that supports it - just a shame Sub dropped support for VMR-7 in PVRX2!

[zed]

What is there in Vista Home Premium or Business that makes them more desirable for GB-PVR than Vista Basic? If you're running GB-PVR who cares about the Media Center stuff? Or Aero eye-candy? Does EVR work in Basic? Is there any advantage to Vista over XP for a server machine? I ask because I have access to a Basic license but don't want to spend the $ on anything else.