Comments on: Vista Media Centre is junk – Is this Alpha code?

By: The hurdles of setting up Vista Media Centre | Paul's esoteric meanderings

The hurdles of setting up Vista Media Centre | Paul's esoteric meanderings — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 09:24:04 +0000

[...] OK – it came time to rebuild the media centre. [...]

By: My digital home just isn’t quite there yet | Paul's esoteric meanderings

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:51:55 +0000

[...] been trying to have the whole digital home experience for a while now. I’ve reviewed Vista Media Centre, Home Server, Wireless N before, the experiences there are [...]

By: Randal

Randal — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 01:27:02 +0000

Last year I brought a beyonwiz PVR.

I will admit that until the December formware update I did have a couple of small issues but they are all mostly resolved now.

Althought there are a couple of things it can’t do compared to a Media centre pc, I still think it’s a much better option.

Simple to use (the wife facter is alway inportant).
save’s me getting Microsoft help desk call questions from the wife in the middle of the day

play’s movies, music picture files from network shares fine (only draw back is you can’t install additional codec’s youeself, but it has handled all my divx and xvid files so far.) Only files it will not play for me are the AVI’s direct from digital camera. Plays most downloaded avi’s fine.

And since the TV stations started broadcasting their own EPG guide infomation I no longer need IceTV program guide updates.

can’t burn dvd’s…… why would i want to do this in front of my tv anyway… thats why I have a computer in the study (where it belongs)

took 10 min to set up from unpacking, scanning channels, setting up username/password to access NAS box shares.

Hardest thing to configure was the Harmonay Universal Remote to run TV, PVR, DVD player & AMP etc.

By: Brendon Davis » Blog Archive » My Media-Center Setup

Brendon Davis » Blog Archive » My Media-Center Setup — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 14:14:02 +0000

[...] quite happily and have had little to no problems. Installing MCE on custom hardware is one of those black-arts that need a bit of tweaking to work just the way you want. Once you have it going though, it works [...]

By: Brendon Davis

Brendon Davis — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 01:46:56 +0000

While some of my experiences on MCE are similar, I have had a positive experience. My MCE runs quietly in the corner of the room, recording our HD TV for later viewing. It lets us play movies or music from file shares on the Home Server.

Admittedly I do have a USB keyboard and mouse permanently attached that is stuck in a cupboard which I pull out from time to time to maintain the system. For the rest of my house mates, the only problem is deciding which show to watch first…

For the average mom & dad, I suggest installing a tuner card and extra hdd in the family computer then using some type of media-centre-extender device to play the content. For those of us who want the box in the living room, it does require a bit of work to configure and maintain.