Anyone here running this and can give any feedback?

I'm just running XP off an older PC in the lounge room, hooked up to the TV and wirelessly dongled to the adsl router with a wireless keyboard and mouse. I'm not having any issues with it at all and I've acquired a copy of media center and I'm not sure if it's worth even installing.

Media Center 2005 = balls
I used it quite a bit over the years, I was never happy with the performance or options to customise my media center so I axed it!

Using this and it's great, http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

pretty much everyone I work with runs one.. it can be a pain to get the Foxtel working properly with it though.

MCE 2005 is better than XP Home hands-down. ya load it up and she just works. I liked that lots of computer stores around Brizzy were dumping XP Home in favour for it back when the Vista upgrade deal was on last year.. a shame that's ended eh

I'm not too keen on the Vista version yet.. the codec issues may have been resolved by now - I dunno.

I don't have any cable or digital TV running through mine, I only use it for uh freely available downloadable television shows and movies, the main reason I wouldn't mind giving it a try is because apparently you can stream video the 360 through it

Had a look at LinuxMCE or MythTV?

the main reason I wouldn't mind giving it a try is because apparently you can stream video the 360 through it

yeah I'm at a loss there dude.. we had to set one up @ work thru the media centres on display, but they were more trouble than they were worth in the end. we ditched them with no intent of supporting or selling them specifically for that task in the future.

XBox playing media was a good idea, but a pain in the ass when things eventually need attention/repair/upgrade. it's a fun thing to experiment with though.

if you want to save moneys then you can't go past a linux based tv box on a half decent old pc eh.

the only people that go full-blown MCE hookups with the decent screen seem to be the ones who aren't short of a dollar

last edited by koopz at 18:57:56 29/Apr/07

i'm running media centre 2005 + xbox 360 and it works great.

the only problem is that it doesn't stream divx and xvid natively, and you just need a tiny pluggin to get that happening.

i'm using Transcode360, basically it streams the divx to the xbox, but it converts it in realtime to wmv so the xbox can read it. it's all transparent from the user's point of view, so instead of clicking on a media file, you just click "transcode" and you're done. works with dolby 5.1 divx's as well.

Be sure and check out www.xpmediacenter.com.au if you do decide to travel the MCE 2005 route.

I'm thoroughly happy with my machine, especially with it's wife-proof remote and GUI.

ive been running it for 2years with 2 haugpage 1300 tuners, dvd burner. rate it. great when mates come over for barbies ect. im never home till after 9 at night, so i have all good tv recorded, then just fast forward through the ads.

having said that, i just upgraded to vista ultimate on the weekend. the interface is a lot slicker. didnt need to get 3rd partie dvd decoders ect. worked out the box.

I'm not too keen on the Vista version yet.. the codec issues may have been resolved by now - I dunno.

i didnt have an issue

I've been using it for a while now and am very happy with it.

my only issues to date have been mucking around with the EPG to get it working & issues with overscan etc using my LCD tv (spose thats not mce related just nvidia - LCD TV)

really wish the xbox supported divx a bit nicer so i could get my pc back though. (tried transcode but got sick of it)

I'm a total advocate for Media Portal too.

I don't run a great new machine on my TV, it's pretty much an older piece of crap, so MCE runs like a dog. Menu switching, everything requires too much system resources for my AMD XP 2200+ to handle, so XP Home + Media Portal is perfect. I can cut off all unnecessary services from XP home, and media portal only runs up a 30-50mb memory deficit, so it's bee-utiful. Also easy to use Analogue tuner with media portal.

check it out at least, it'd save you reinstalling first.