Any one here playing around with Windows Xp Media Center Edition (or WMCE) yet?
The problem that i have windows MMCE is that Microsoft is trying get more market share into the home consumer market. They they started with with X-Box. However with the fact that people are now downloading movies, and storing home movies or photo's digitally and other stuff digitally. And that is all fine with a computer.
However when it comes down to a computer, how many times does that fall over compaired to your VCR, DVD Player, Home Theature System.
If you are planning on have your media center contected to the internet, the you better get yourself some virus protection.
Like you turn on a DVD player, it ready to go to play DVD.
You turn your a computer, you are normally waiting about 2 minutes for it to boot.
Mind you, intel has started to develop there new VIIV technology which effectively that will effectively allow you to power down your PC to a extremely LOW POWER mode, therefore you will not need to wait for the boot up process of your computer. However this technology will not be hitting the market until Q2-2006.
Driver support, so far a lot of the manufacuture do not offically have driver support for WMCE. Since WMCE is nothing more that Windows XP Pro with some extra stuff added onto it, you can get away with installing the WinX Drivers.
However on the 3 video cards that I have tried (going on later 4th today), I have not been able to get any of the nVidia WMCE Drivers to work. During the installation, I get this error message telling me that this is the wrong operating system.
DVD Play Back....... fresh install of WMCE does to give you DVD play back. You need to install some sort of DVD Play Back Software. Thankfully just about all DVD Drive amd Quality Video Cards comes with PowerDVD or Some thing like that.
DVD Regions.... for all those people (like myself) that seem to have DVDs from your local DVD store as well as 3 other reagons, you are still going to have problem with your DVD Drive Locking up after 5 region changes. I will let you know how I go with DVD Region Free. If some one knows of a FREE software download that does the same job as DVD Region Free, I would like to know about.
Other method is that you can crack your DVD's Firmware. But that may void your warranty.
DivX..... even after installing the WMCE updates, the Divx codex that are currently installed on WMCE are about 2 years out of date. Yesterday I grabbed about a had full of my AVI. And I was only able to play about one or two files. It would be nice if WMCE Windows Media Player would give you some sort of Error Code when you are missing a codex.
I am not looking forward to trying out things like MKV and OGGs... especially considering that there is multiple subtitles and audio tracks on some of those. I have enough problems with those just on Window Xp Pro.
Anyways, I will post more when i get more stuff to write about.
If Microsoft thinks they are going to be able to sell their OS like a normal DVD player to Joe-I-Know-F***-All-About-Computer, they are seriously mistaken.
The problem that i have windows MMCE is that Microsoft is trying get more market share into the home consumer market. They they started with with X-Box. However with the fact that people are now downloading movies, and storing home movies or photo's digitally and other stuff digitally. And that is all fine with a computer.
However when it comes down to a computer, how many times does that fall over compaired to your VCR, DVD Player, Home Theature System.
If you are planning on have your media center contected to the internet, the you better get yourself some virus protection.
Like you turn on a DVD player, it ready to go to play DVD.
You turn your a computer, you are normally waiting about 2 minutes for it to boot.
Mind you, intel has started to develop there new VIIV technology which effectively that will effectively allow you to power down your PC to a extremely LOW POWER mode, therefore you will not need to wait for the boot up process of your computer. However this technology will not be hitting the market until Q2-2006.
Driver support, so far a lot of the manufacuture do not offically have driver support for WMCE. Since WMCE is nothing more that Windows XP Pro with some extra stuff added onto it, you can get away with installing the WinX Drivers.
However on the 3 video cards that I have tried (going on later 4th today), I have not been able to get any of the nVidia WMCE Drivers to work. During the installation, I get this error message telling me that this is the wrong operating system.
DVD Play Back....... fresh install of WMCE does to give you DVD play back. You need to install some sort of DVD Play Back Software. Thankfully just about all DVD Drive amd Quality Video Cards comes with PowerDVD or Some thing like that.
DVD Regions.... for all those people (like myself) that seem to have DVDs from your local DVD store as well as 3 other reagons, you are still going to have problem with your DVD Drive Locking up after 5 region changes. I will let you know how I go with DVD Region Free. If some one knows of a FREE software download that does the same job as DVD Region Free, I would like to know about.
Other method is that you can crack your DVD's Firmware. But that may void your warranty.
DivX..... even after installing the WMCE updates, the Divx codex that are currently installed on WMCE are about 2 years out of date. Yesterday I grabbed about a had full of my AVI. And I was only able to play about one or two files. It would be nice if WMCE Windows Media Player would give you some sort of Error Code when you are missing a codex.
I am not looking forward to trying out things like MKV and OGGs... especially considering that there is multiple subtitles and audio tracks on some of those. I have enough problems with those just on Window Xp Pro.
Anyways, I will post more when i get more stuff to write about.
If Microsoft thinks they are going to be able to sell their OS like a normal DVD player to Joe-I-Know-F***-All-About-Computer, they are seriously mistaken.
