TheGreenButton - Windows Media Center Forums

Apologies if this has been asked before, I searched but didn't find an answer, likely bad wording, google-fu, etc... .

But what is the difference between these two versions? Are these forks of the same leak/release or competing projects?

WMC V13 was an old version with scripts to work round the problems we were having until a better solution could be found.

Now that 8.8.5 addresses all the issues in one elegant ready to run package, V13 is no longer needed .

Due to the potential vulnerabilities introduced by rolling back DLLs, it has been withdrawn.

Thanks for the explanation. Most appreciated.

If I have v13 installed on my htpc's, is it worthwhile to update now, or just wait till I have a problem and reinstall?

If it is working, you can leave it as long as you are aware of the small risk of vulnerabilities on your system.

The next upgrade will mostly likely involve a remove/reinstall so maybe that is the time to upgrade WMC.

W10 ver 1511 build 10586
8.8.5 does not find my HDHomeRun cable card tuner connections(3) only the HomeRun ATSC tuner connections(2).
Only WMC V13 finds both both HDHomeRun cable card and ATSC tuner connections. A total of 5 tunerconnections.

I have everything working on VMC 13 uninstall and then install 8.8.5 so I know it is not the W10 firewall or network discovery configuration.

Any suggestions or a newer version of VMC 13?

As you may know, there are functions in some of the system DLLs (ones that reside in \Windows\System32) that WMC requires.

When WMC was supported, MS would ensure that any changes made to the core components of Windows including those DLLs would not break it.

Since WMC was discontinued, MS don't care whether changes to the core components of Windows or those DLLs break WMC.

Some of the subsystems and DLLs that WMC expects to see have been changed or removed and that is why WMC stopped working.

The main functional difference between V12/13 and V8.8.5 is how those issues are resolved.

There were a number of workarounds devised that undid the changes made by restoring the versions of system DLLs and registry entries that WMC relies on. When I created V13, all I did was to incorporate those workarounds into V12 and make a few changes to the installation routine. It works but may introduce system wide vulnerabilities by replacing updated DLLs with old versions. Because of that, V13 is basically EOL and will not be updated.

V8.8.5 is a much more elegant solution because it puts the required versions of the DLLs in the same folder as WMC and is the only software that uses them. That means that MS updates can replace the DLLs in the system32 folder and WMC keeps on working.

I get the impression that although V8.8.5 works for most people, there are a couple of things that affect people with older tuners.

The main problem seems to be that the functionality of ENCDec was moved to MSVidctl. Later on, ENCDec and the associated registry entries were removed entirely. I may be wrong but I'm not sure that this change is fully 'rolled back' in V8.8.5 and that is why anything that expects to see ENCDec and the registry entries fails.

There were other changes made in the V8.8 branch but these were mainly to do with RDP and probably don't have any affect on the tuner side of things.

Unfortunately, I want to migrate to 8.8.5 but only V13 sees the cable card tuners.

The thing is, most of the workarounds (even the ones in V13) aren't needed on 1511 because they are there to solve problems introduced in later versions of Windows 10.

If you are intent on installing 8.8.5, all I can suggest is that you contact the guy who made the modifications in 8.8.5 and ask if he's got any ideas.

His username is pinpoint.