I would like to try win10 and WMC 12 but not willing to do it on a setup I have in use with recordings I'm trying to hold on to for a bit. Rovi is not so prefect so EPG123 might be better I have to learn how that all works. I have not invested a lot of time in learning more about this and how things have changed and new stuff since what I have was working fine... The things I like about Tivo Bolt is it brings the live, recorded and streaming content together, but don't like the monthly/anual subscription fees. X1 probably wont do that and wont have either wont support my locally stored digital movies like WMC does with media browser.
We have WMC on Windows 8.1 with 7 cablecard tuners (a 3-tuner box and a 4-tuner box) and 6 Xbox 360s. We're using Comcast, and there aren't many options for watching and recording DRM programs - and will likely continue using WMC on 8.1 for now.
I've done some cost estimates of the few options we have. Comcast in our area is charging $100 per year per cablecard - which makes the CC rental a significant long term cost.
Since we already own our WMC hardware, the 5 year cost for running WMC is $1,000 - which would increase some if we shifted to EPG123.
If we shifted to Comcast's X1, and rented a DVR and STBs, our 5 year cost would be $3,600. X1 has less functionality than WMC, losing the ability to do automatic commercial skipping or watching downloaded/personal videos. And while they have streaming support - it is only for the channels in your package - not the popular streaming services.
If we shifted to TiVo, we'd probably need two Bolts today, along with minis, the 5 year cost would be $3,850. TiVo is pretty close to the functionality we have in WMC today, plus it adds integration of the major streaming services. BUT, the Rovi acquisition creates uncertainty about the future of TiVo, so it may be worthwhile to let the dust settle on the acquisition before committing to TiVo.
If TiVo produces a 6 tuner Bolt, we'd only need one Bolt "Pro", which reduces the 5 year cost to $2,650.
The last option is SD's new DVR software. As of today, it appears to fall far short of being a WMC replacement and because they haven't implemented tuner sharing between clients, we'd probably have to add a 3rd HDHR tuner box, which increases our annual cablecard rental. If SD eventually implements enough functionality to serve as a viable WMC replacement, the 5 year cost would be $2,550, assuming we'd use our existing WMC PC as the DVR and our existing HDHR tuner boxes, only having to purchase replacements for the Xbox 360 extenders.
With the free Windows 10 upgrades expiring this week, I've added an old disk to our WMC PC and cloned the WMC system disk to that disk. I plan to perform the Windows 10 upgrade on this extra disk - and then store it, in case we ever decide to use Windows 10 on this PC (whether it's with the WMC hack on Windows 10 or using SD's DVR software). Since WMC seems to work fine for us on Windows 8.1, there doesn't seem to be any reason to try running WMC on Windows 10.