Dedicated small form factor WMC 8.1

[williaml99]

Greetings all

Currently my wife and I are both running WMC on windows 10 Home run Prime Cable Card on Mediacom. We both have deferred upgrade to Anniversary Update (AU) after having to role back my surface pro 3 after it ate WMC and we know WMC wont work on that build. We both are into the win 10 echo system with phones and tablets. Both of our systems are high end home built. After the AU deal I am thinking of picking up a small form factor PC. Maybe a used PC that would easily fit on her entertainment stand and HDMI to AVR. OS purchase is not an issue as I am action pack subscriber. We have used our main PCs for years to run WMC. They were always pretty high end. If I were to do this, the PC would have only one job and that would be WMC. Would use 8.1 as support would last the longest. I liked 8.1 ok anyway. I would like some suggestions on what specs would be good enough for dedicated device. Also interested in your thoughts on about seeing the end of WMC on windows 10 experiment coming to an end. I have certainly enjoyed the benefits from the fine group creating the hack.

Thanks

[choliscott]

Hello,

Since you mentioned using Win 8.1, I figured I would mention that WMC was offered as an optional upgrade for $10 for W8 professional only. That being said, MS stopped offering it sometime late last year, so you unless you already purchased the add on, the action pack has it, or you know someone who is no longer using their add on, you might be OOL on using W8.1. Windows 8.1 support is thru 2023 & Windows 7 support is thru 2020. People have mentioned that WMC is supposed to be support thru both of these years, however nobody is sure if the guide data will still be offered thru this time frame. That being said, EPG123 (which is on another thread on here works great for guide info).

You mention the AU broke W10 WMC, so I'm assuming you were running WMC on W10? If you didn't have any issues running that, my suggestion is to install the earlier version (that worked for you) & turning off updates for the dedicated machine. If you don't like the idea of turning off updates for the computer, you could run Windows 7, since it's supported for another 4 years.

For hardware, I did have a few questions

1) How many TV did you want to connect to the box & how many of those would be used at the same time?
2) What cable card tuners do you have or which one are you looking at getting?
3) Anything else you would like to run with this box (Plex, Emby, Recorded TV HD, any video conversion tools, etc)?

My parents run strictly media center with a Ceton 4 tuner PCI card, with 2 TV's being used at the same time. The hardware is an Intel G3258 with 8 GB of ram, with a 120 GB SSD for the OS & an Hitachi Green drive for the recording storage, & I have yet to hear any of them complain because of performance.

[williaml99]

Thanks for the reply choliscott. I did not realize "MS stopped offering it " I do have keys from back when I had 8.1. I have no clue if they will still work. I have HD Home run Prime with cable card and old HD Homerun for QAM. Two of us sharing the 5 tuners. Your post was very helpful. I think that gives me enough of an idea. I have deferred the upgrades on both of our computers. I can put up with the silliness of WMC on win 10 but I want her to have a solid solution. I will let it roll on her computer for a while but I am afraid MS will make it harder and harder to use WMC.

[Rainey]

Remember that Win 8.1 and WMC will work fine on the TV connected direct to the PC, but only Xbox will work normal as an extender on Win 8.1.
If you are using echo's then you would need a phone to change channels as Win 8.1 will not do RDP with the echo so no TV guide etc..

The problem you may have with not taking updates is if you run other software like Plex or Emby the longer you go not taking update at so point things will stop working as they update and add features.