Software Review: Windows XP Media Center 2005 Edition!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by NightFireTuning

Pac...why not just try it? you can get a cheap 5gb hard drive for like 10 bucks at a used computer place, just try it out for the 30 day trial microsoft gives you.

---

yea i have a 10GB from my xbox, but i have been keeping it away for a year now JUST IN CASE

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jeepguy

Wow. Six pages and no answer to what I wondered at the beginning ;)

If this is designed to be used on TVs, I wonder if it would be more friendly looking on a composite LCD than regular windows is.

Anyone?

---

actually i read it somewhere here,, yes,, it looks better on TVS than regular xp,,, as thats mainly what it was designed for

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Arathranar

I'm not sure what you reckon is gone. MCE is based on *exactly* Windows XP Pro with the ability to join a Domain permanently disabled. That single change may remove the odd service (but I doubt it). MCE itself adds a bunch of other services if you ever enable TV watching. And they are huge memory hogs.

So please do a comparison between XP SP2 Pro and XP SP2 MCE and tell us what services are no longer running on MCE. I'd love to know.

---

.

I've been running MCE from 2004. 2005 adds a few nice things. I personaly think it is the best looking and bug free interface out there. WITH THE STOCK INSTALL yes the buttons are a little too small and once you get a good number of mp3 it does become slower to browse music. I am curently running an AMD XP-M 2000+ w/ a Radeon 9200 128Meb vid card and 512M of ram w/ a 7200RPM 160Gig Hard drive.

Here are some things that M$ should have added to make it a little better/effecient to browse songs and movies.

1. Make the buttons bigger. Yes you can change Icons and such but I have yet to see (and I mean a screen shot at the very least) larger buttons. I am going to try to mess with this when I get a chance
2. When browsing by album art or artist it would be much easier to have an alphabetized listing of letters on the side so you could jump to those artists/albums. I.e. on the right side have A-E then under that F-J etc.
3. Make it customizable. MY GOD M$!!! Us end users are not idiots. Let us change the size of the buttons, let us move them to where we want them, let us change the color if we want. Hell you included that stuff in windows 3.1.
4. I refuse to buy an MCE Remote only because it is IR. PLEASE correct me if I am wrong as this is the ONLY reason I will not buy one. I am using an RF Remote Wonder w/ the MCE plugin and it works like a champ. I would like the instant access to the different functions like going directly to movies or music from another section.

Other than these problems M$ has a winner on it's hands here. I love it and will stay with it for quite some time.

I wonder how much 'personalizing' can be done on MCE... I would like to remove the 'My Pictures' and 'My Videos' and I would like to add my GPS apps to the 'other apps' thing... (One way or another)

If that would be possible, I'd like it a lot more...

Also, is it just me, or is it a bit slow with 320 albums (about 6500 songs)? I would like to 'dump' the album thing all together, and switch to a directory-type deal like with most of the carpc frontends on this site... They can still keep the album thing in though, just would like a faster way to browse through all the stuff... Perhaps its just a bit of 'getting used to', would require me to triple check my MP3 tags again though...

If it was faster (perhaps a list view, instead of thumbnail view), I could like it more...

Because it does seem a little slow on a Celeron 2.6Ghz with a GeforceMX4 (and 1Gb memory)...

On the otherhand, I do like the remote, wonder if I can assign different functions to different buttons... There's got to be a way to customize this all...

ok got mce 2005 installed and runs alot faster transferring mp3 as we speak..problem is whenever i start media center(not os) says need updated drivers for my video card.but continues to load and works fine?? wtf.ok so how do i get rid of that error more so annoying than anything. im have a: via epia m10000,256mb ram,80gb 8mb cache hdd,7" ts lilliput. any resolutions are appreciated.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by fallnangel

ok got mce 2005 installed and runs alot faster transferring mp3 as we speak..problem is whenever i start media center(not os) says need updated drivers for my video card.but continues to load and works fine?? wtf.ok so how do i get rid of that error more so annoying than anything. im have a: via epia m10000,256mb ram,80gb 8mb cache hdd,7" ts lilliput. any resolutions are appreciated.

---

Go to your video card web site and download drivers for MCE 05. I had to get them from nVidia for my GeForce 4 before it would even run.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by fallnangel

ok got mce 2005 installed and runs alot faster transferring mp3 as we speak..problem is whenever i start media center(not os) says need updated drivers for my video card.but continues to load and works fine?? wtf.ok so how do i get rid of that error more so annoying than anything. im have a: via epia m10000,256mb ram,80gb 8mb cache hdd,7" ts lilliput. any resolutions are appreciated.

---

It will all run fine except for the videos. They won't play. Like was said you need to update your drivers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Defiler

I've been running MCE from 2004. 2005 adds a few nice things. I personaly think it is the best looking and bug free interface out there. WITH THE STOCK INSTALL yes the buttons are a little too small and once you get a good number of mp3 it does become slower to browse music. I am curently running an AMD XP-M 2000+ w/ a Radeon 9200 128Meb vid card and 512M of ram w/ a 7200RPM 160Gig Hard drive.

Here are some things that M$ should have added to make it a little better/effecient to browse songs and movies.

1. Make the buttons bigger. Yes you can change Icons and such but I have yet to see (and I mean a screen shot at the very least) larger buttons. I am going to try to mess with this when I get a chance
2. When browsing by album art or artist it would be much easier to have an alphabetized listing of letters on the side so you could jump to those artists/albums. I.e. on the right side have A-E then under that F-J etc.
3. Make it customizable. MY GOD M$!!! Us end users are not idiots. Let us change the size of the buttons, let us move them to where we want them, let us change the color if we want. Hell you included that stuff in windows 3.1.
4. I refuse to buy an MCE Remote only because it is IR. PLEASE correct me if I am wrong as this is the ONLY reason I will not buy one. I am using an RF Remote Wonder w/ the MCE plugin and it works like a champ. I would like the instant access to the different functions like going directly to movies or music from another section.

Other than these problems M$ has a winner on it's hands here. I love it and will stay with it for quite some time.

---

I can't tell you how much I agree with everything you said here. My exact feelings and almost my exact setup (minus the videocard. My CPU is underclocked to 2000).
Would also like to reiterate how it needs to have a listmode rather than just the thumbnail view.
One other thing I have found it that the search is useless for those with just touchscreens. There is no OSK and it makes you use a keyboard or remote.

nice post guys. I'll give it a whirl on my 16:9 Sony widescreen as well as my Xenarc 700TSV and let you know what I think. Thanks NightFire for all your insight.