Morning all, So I have just noticed a new icon in my system tray, friend Microsoft is letting me know that I can now reserve Windows 10 to make my computers all newified as soon as it comes out. As you can imagine, triumphant scenes of ecstatic bliss ensued. Fact is sooner or later, what was the best Windows OS one day suddenly starts to look real stinky compared to the fresh one, which is why I tend to upgrade sooner rather than later. I guess I should reserve Windows 10 now for all my Windows 7 and Windows 8 systems, but there is a an issue. All my home systems, the rig, 2 media pcs and my laptop run Media Center, one PC has TV tuners the others have software tuners courtesy of DVBLink. Quick check, looks like Microsoft has binned Media Center in Windows 10. So is there going to be support for TV tuners at all, if yes what is it if not then is there a good alternative if I upgrade to Windows 10?
I have been having a similar quandry, and I think I might go for Kodi - it supports DVBLink (which is a key thing for me), and will run under Win 10 as far as I can ascertain at the moment)
I use Kodi, mainly for playing music albums, movies and TV boxed-sets. I find it is extremely good at managing this. It also works with my TV tuner, which I use very occasionally for freesat. I would say it's a bit of a pain to set up Kodi, and very pleasant to use thereafter.
Here's another Kodi (XBMC) user. I think it's really easy to setup and use. The only irritation is the rare occasion that my file names can't be recognized by the software's auto-detect and I have to go rename a bunch of stuff. You can get software to auto-rename files as well, but it's another annoying step. Happily, it's extremely rare that I need to go renaming files. So, Kodi for the win.
Right, I might install Kodi tonight to see if I like it. Was looking at the TV tuner setup which appears to require an add on, so does look a bit more complicated, thanks all
Bungletron, thanks for pointing me to this thread! I am a bit disturbed that they are canning WMC, the wife will be annoyed. Maybe a reason not to upgrade to windows 10 for W7/W8 HTPC boxes? Has anyone seen any "official" verification of this on the web? I am currently finding WMC to be increasingly unreliable, which I have put down to my hardware tbh. As far as alternatives go I can give some perspective on MediaPortal as, in addition to my WMC box, I have recently started to run a Quad tuner MediaPortal server on my network at home and use both the MediaPortal and Kodi front ends on different devices around this house e.g. laptops, PC's, Android tablets, raspberry Pi. I still have some wrinkles to iron out but its all up and working now. The server / client setup is very cool if you have a decent network and the MediaPortal client seems very polished and has lots of good plugins and options, a bit like how I imagine WMC would have been if any development on it had been done in the last 10 years! I also like Kodi, with the correct server addon it works well as a frontend on any devices I have tried. I like how MP can record multiple programmes from the same multiplex, I imagine with a multi-tuner setup it would be quite difficult to run out of tuners on a UK DVB-T2 setup. I love how the ad-removal software seems to work really well so my recordings have no ads. Its also great that all the clients on the system on any device have access to all the recorded TV. Annoying that there is no Apple / iPad client without jailbreaking - I guess thats just Apple for you. The setup of MediaPortal is not as straighforward and user-friendly as WMC, requires some reading of the wiki and I have encountered one or two issues I had to research (Google!) but there is a lot of help out there. I would say any reasonably tech-minded person could easily get there but don't expect to run through a quick wizard and be done. I believe the single seat installation i.e. client and server on same box is a bit more straight forward. The software has been very reliable for me, I can't recall any server crashes or issues, and its free! Cheers Chunks
http://www.zdnet.com/article/rip-windows-media-center/ Actually the biggest losers are Americans with their weird CableCard thing, which no one else outside WMC really supports. MediaPortal has some support, but not for everything.
Would be interesting to know what the "other option for DVD playback in the future" is going to be, I wonder if they are talking about extra codecs or more likely a WMC replacement.
I'm doubtful if I would grab this reservation upgrade or not. Simply because not all features in windows 10 can be installed. It will depend on the driver and firmware support compatibility.
Hmm, had a look, so far I feel that Windows Media Center still has the best TV tuner integration, which is disappointing. Kodi I could get used to, in fact it is still similar to XBMC which I used to run on an original xbox, that could be 10 years ago! Apart from the DVBLink client the other TV tuner addons do leave a lot to be desired. I should expand that my main HTPC runs a dedicated quad tuner, however other computers at home are also served by a Netgear RN104 NAS with DVBlink server plus 3 more tuners. Media center on the HTPC was great because it would use the onboard tuner for live viewing and along with the dvblink addon could playback anything recorded on the server. I am struggling to come up with alternate solution. I tried NextPVR and Mediaportal to integrate my hardware tuners into kodi, I liked Mediaportal best. Basically NextPVR looks shoddy and dated, further configuration is a b, could not get sound on DVB-T2 streams, however it's addon was easily activated in Kodi. Mediaportal was far better and easier to run, however when I tried to integrate it into Kodi, it lost and confused a stack of channels. I did briefly try to add Mediaportal and DVBlink client but then DVBlink client would not connect, I guess maybe you cannot have multiple PVR addons running. I think Microsoft's line on this for some time and also part of the reason of MCE scrapage is the introduction of Blu-ray and now digital media making DVDs more and more irrelevant or niche products. I remember some MS guy's rather stunning rebutting of lack of dvd support by saying that when you buy the blu-ray software it will decode dvds too, and that software is better than MS, so they won't bother providing it because it would add to costs and they freely admit their implementation is rubbish.
@Bungletron, Yea I've read the reasons they (Microsoft) gave for why they dropped WMC, the thing that drew my attention is that Gabe Aul said "If you have WMC now, we'll have a DVD option for you in an update later this year" For me that points to either a new video app like RichCreedy said, or possibly a more feature rich replacement for Media Center in the form of a downloadable app, well unless they plan on bringing yet more consoleifcation to Windows by adding DVD playback to Xbox Video.
XBMC and Kodi are the same thing. They renamed it recently (within the past year I think) to Kodi. I would look for some videos of different PVR add ons for both XBMC and Kodi. After watching some videos you'll probably find something that works. Bummer that MS is giving up on Media Center, especially when it does this one thing very well. Hopefully you'll find a way to make XBMC just as easy to use/navigate, or find an even better solution.
It may not make that much difference to Microsoft in terms of overall numbers sold but I have always thought that WMC was their foothold in the living room and media segment e.g. you want WMC as your primary interface. so you end up with Windows on your HTPC. As others have said, in the future I guess even more HTPC's will be Linux/SteamOS based. Chunks
Yeah, five years from now Microsoft will realise that they have no foothold in the smart home market and try and recreate a WMC-a-like, only not as good as the original WMC that they did away with.
They already have a WMC-a-like foothold in the smart home market, it's called Xbox Music, Xbox Video, Xbox on Windows 10.
Sure, but who wants to buy an XBox and a PC? It would make more sense if XBox was a reasonably customisable platform, i.e. could run Windows 10, take mainstream graphic cards and had some internal PCI-E slots for third party add-ons. Something that can be a game console and a HTPC and a family PC.
Its not an "and" I guess Microsoft would be happy with either or, Windows 10 comes with Xbox apps that AFAIK brings a great deal of what's on the Xbox to Windows 10, then later in the year the Xbox One is going to be updated with Windows 10. I.e Windows & Xbox are going to share features, the Xbox name has only recently been dropped from the Video and Music apps but for all intent and purposes there the same apps as those that will be seen in the Xbox One update next year.
Agreed - I found the WMC addon for Kodi the easiest TV-tuner front-end to manage and configure. NextPVR is dated and I struggled to get MediaPortal working - not ideal. I'm not sure about upgrading to Win10 for this reason...