Righty.

saying as we have a xbox360 now.. and i have a hosed directx install and am on the verge of doing the ms-dance on my pc...

what are the advantages/disadvantages of moving to xp-mce over xp-pro i use currently

ovbiously if i put mce on i can watch vids on my xbox in front room, does this include divx and xvid vids?

will i loose functionality with MCE? ie playing games on my pc?

Windows media centre is basically windows xp professional with the bells and whistles on the front for the media centre.

You cannot join a windows media centre pc to a domain. (guessing this wont bother you)

It will do everything xp pro does other then that. You can turn off the media centre front end thing and its just like having xp pro.

Media centre contains better compatibilty with tv displays whether they are high def or not. Making it easier to output to a tv ( this probably wont bother you as you will use the 360 as an extender)

As far as I am aware you can watch everything on the 360 that you can on the pc as I believe it does the decoding on the pc. (dont quote me on this I could be completely wrong)

with media centre edition you get all the fancy pvr and tv guide stuff and the ability to use messenger from within the interface. greater support for tv cards.

All your games will work fine. Infact you can make a section on the menu for them and run them from there.

From what I have heard, in one of the next updates for the 360, microsoft will be adding support to play your video files off your pc without the need for media centre edition (again dont quote me on it but I am pretty sure of this)

this update was mentioned at the same times as xbox live tv service which will allow you to jump into a game your friends are in and watch or watch the final match of a league etc... sounds good to me.

Hopefully my post has been of some help. I dont have media centre edition, but have spent a bit of time mulling it over. So far I havent bothered as my pc is plugged into my tv anyway so can watch everything off it. Also its a damn site quieter then my xbox 360.

As stated above, except one small thing. The XBOX360 as an extender currently cannot play divx files from the MCE extender interface. Currently the only way of streaming video from another pc is using the MCE extender. You can play music and view photos from any xp pro workstation though.

you can watch other types of video such as divx with an aditional pice of software that converts and streams it to the xbox on the fly but tis quite cpu intensive.

to use the recording functions etc you will need a tv card in the computer too but other than that i have found no differences to XP pro

I bought my new computer because it had media centre on it. It's nowt but trouble IMO.

I tend to download TV form the internet (Lost series2, quality!) The downloads are in XVid format and whenever I try and play them on the media centre, it just freezes. It freezes quite alot actually, so much so that I've stopped using it.

If it worked correctly it would be a brilliant piece of software, but there's just too many bugs!

its not the OS mate as i am sat here right now using XP MCE

its either a driver fighting something, faulty software or faulty hardware. that should narrow your fault down a bit

btw we haven't had any issues yet i don't think with MCE

Surprised it doesn't support domains - what's all that about then :confused:

I have a workgroup-based setup at home right now but I want to move to a domain structure due to the number of machines on my network nearing 30 'currently working' rigs.

Was kinda hoping to build a HTPC at some stage. Any workarounds known for this?

MCE 2005 uses "fast user switching" for extender functionality. When you joiin a domain, this is disabled hence why you cant join a domain.

However, if you dont plan to have any extenders there is a way. During the install you are still asked during the network setup if you want to join a domain. Join the domain here and all will be well, your mce will work just fine BUT you will not not able to connect any extenders.

Dont forget, you cant upgrade from any version of XP to MCE, except an earlier version of MCE. The only way to install MCE is from scratch. If you try and upgrade an existing install you will just have XP Pro at the end without any MCE software.

I bought a copy of MCE from E-buyer for my older sons new PC - about

I'm intrugued by this discussion. Am considering getting a Samsung 19" widescreen tft for my main pc. It's HD ready and all that but what sort of spec would my pc have to be to run MCE and what sort of special hardware would i need to make the most of it. Sorry for hi jacking your thread Loz. I know nothing about MCE atm.

Cheers Manny - yeah I wouldn't be using extenders so that sounds workable. Fast user switching disabled is fine by me

Johnny, for MCE use only just about any graphics card will do. For HD use, you will really need at lease a Nvidia Geforce 6 or equivelant ATI card. A good decoder is also essential, the Nvidia purevideo one for instance can take advantage of all the features and get the best out of Nvidia cards.

Johnny, for MCE use only just about any graphics card will do. For HD use, you will really need at lease a Nvidia Geforce 6 or equivelant ATI card. A good decoder is also essential, the Nvidia purevideo one for instance can take advantage of all the features and get the best out of Nvidia cards.

your also looking at a meaty processor too. My old 2.4 ghz p4 couldnt really cope with playin high def stuff. I have seen 3ghz p4's and up recommended especially for 1080p content.

differences between xp pro and mce: mce can't join domains (well, as hinted at earlier, you can if you specify it on first build, but to do this your network card must work without extra drivers as it'll need it during setup). joining a domain also cocks up media extenders as previously pointed out. also, cached credentials don't exist in MCE - again, not likely to be a problem.

you need hardware that's MCE-compliant - most DX9 gfx cards are fine. watch out for the tuners etc, and make sure they're on the hardware compatibility list.

MCE's not all that great from past experience.

have a look at GBTV (free, runs on windows) and MythTV (free, runs on linux) as well...

Coolio..

ive actually managed to fix my pc now... fecking direct-x cant uninstall, cant re-install! it got very ugly in the end.. rolling back to vanilla xp, having to re-install sp2, then directx... all this to play the godfather (ace game btw)

so i dont know if itll be worth making a media pc.. as we have a "kiss" dvd player downstairs hooked up to our network that can play divx, xvid and pretty much everything..

only thing we are missing is a PVR for sky.. but thats not so much of an issue with fast broadband