Thread: Where to get Media Center 2005?

Originally Posted by frodobaggins

Pro, with home's networking.

Home's networking which sucks.

Originally Posted by pimpJ

6.. hopefully

and I heard it was actually kind of a dissapointment.. Obviously we wont really know until the time comes.. but..

i'm hoping its a dissapointment, that will cause more people to switch to linux which means better and more software

So is there any chance of this running on an epia 800 with 512Mb RAM (onboard video + sound)??

Originally Posted by -zip-

The DVD, MP3, TV is awsome but no way to add your own apps and launch from the main menu that I could see.

Actually it can be done very easily. I did it. I am running MCE 2005 on my carputer and it works just fine.

Originally Posted by frodobaggins

Pro, with home's networking.

Dunno if I agree with that, you can do remote desktop connection which I believe is only available in Pro. My understanding is that MCE 05 is WinXP PRO SP2 with the added MCE stuff. I have 04 (05 on the way) and that's what it appears to be to me anyway.

If your interested in using a media center for car-computer check out Meedio. I also use that for my HTPC. Has some awsome plug ins, like Movie Showtimes Importer which will download moive showtimes for your local theaters along with the trailers, also does up coming video releases.
Meedio is very configurable but I feel it has a pretty good learning curve, but that's debatable. You can get it up and running pretty quickly but you have to do some learning to get it right for you. The one thing that Meedio (formerly MyHTPC) doesn't do yet is TV.

I tend to use MCE 04 more then Meedio because of the way it sorts my movies (and it starts with the green button). Reminds me of the way Frodoplayer does it. It list all videos together. I prefer the way MCE does it, like explorer view with folders.
For example I have all my movies in folders like d:\movies\the punisher\the punisher.avi. Which would be fine if it weren't for the TV shows I have. For instance:
c:\series\dead like me
c:\series\dead like me\season 1
episode 1
episode 2
episode 3 etc
c:\series\dead like me\season 2
episode 1
episode 2
episode 3 etc

This works pretty good in MCE 04 because you see the folders and drill down from there but in Meedio all you see is every episode under my videos. Which gets confusing because there isn't enough room for the title so all you see is "Dead Like Me..." 28 times.

Originally Posted by voidunknown

Actually it can be done very easily. I did it. I am running MCE 2005 on my carputer and it works just fine.

Please tell us how - , how bout GPS can you get that to launch as a external app??

A post further up mentions that there isnt support for extrernal apps... Meedio does if I recall...

Originally Posted by camsgs3

Please tell us how - , how bout GPS can you get that to launch as a external app??

Yep. Whatever app you want to launch, just add a shortcut for that program to the start menu under "Program Files\Accessories\Media Center\Media Center Programs"

TADA! Open Media Center and go to Other Programs.

Looooong review here: http://www.htpcnews.com/main.php?id=mce2k5_1