preferred OS for GB-PVR?

[johnsonx42]

No doubt this has been discussed before, but the answer tends to change over time....

I'm readying a 'production' GB-PVR machine. It's a dual-core A64, 1GB RAM, GeForce 7600gs with component out. I need to choose an OS; I know GB-PVR works on any current Windows, but I need to know if there are benefits to one or another.

Readily available I have XP Pro and Vista Business.

If there were a compelling reason to do so, I could probably scrounge up an XP Home or a Vista Home Premium license.

I know Vista enables the EVR renderer; is that great and wonderful? I know Home Premium includes a MPEG2 decoder that Business lacks, but is that decoder really worth pursuing?

Comments welcome.

[mvallevand]

Vista Home Premium for new installs

Martin

[Bathman]

EVR is the muts nuts for picture quality. I only wished it came with windows 2000. Vista has to mush bloat.

[SLR_65]

I ran Vista Ultimate for a bit and it worked fine, but the screen would flicker when it was on the TV Guide or other computer generated screens. The LiveTV and Recordings all played fine. I switched to XP Pro and the problem stopped.

I'm just running SVHS over an older TV so the EVR didn't make much difference in appearance.

XP Pro is easy and cheap to come by - just buy a COA off of fleaBay, they can be had easily for $20 or so.

[Captcol]

I am running vista 32 business, initially i had to turn off all the fruit due to poor drivers available for onboard video, I would reccomend more ram for a vista install tho. And I installed the k-lite codec pack so the missing one wasn't really an issue.

I get nice analogue and dvb-s picture with evr on a 42" 1380xwhatever widescreen lcd using dvi-hdmi cable.

[johnsonx42]

Thanks for the input guys. I might need to ask my limey brother-in-law about 'the muts nuts', but I gather from the context it's a good thing

It sounds like Vista Business may be the way to go for me. I already have a license for it; clearly Home Premium would be preferred all else being equal, but I don't have license for that. I may look at VLite-ing a Vista disk to trim the fat a bit.

Then again, the comforting safety of XP Pro is attractive.... still must ponder....

edit: hmm... I dunno about VLite-ing Vista. It appears that a VLited Vista will never accept a service pack. I can start with SP1, but no SP2 when it comes out. Not sure if that's really a big deal though for a single purpose machine... still must ponder...

[johnsonx42]

oh, one Vista question: Would it be wise to turn off Aero, or would that have an undesired side effect?

[pcostanza]

oh, one Vista question: Would it be wise to turn off Aero, or would that have an undesired side effect?

Having Aero on hasn't affected me at all but if you have only 1GB of ram, you might want to try turning it off.

[Captcol]

I disabled aero as my machine is solely an htpc so I don't see the desktop very much, mostly when i am fixing stuff, so i decided not to waste the resources on something I wouldn't see

[zehd]

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...