ajhieb wrote:Sorry, I'm just not buying into the idea that there is this large group of silent WMC enthusiasts that rely on the product but never communicate on the internet about it, who are completely and utterly unaware that Windows 10 won't include WMC, but are going to blindly upgrade on a whim.
I think we've already heard the vast majority of griping about WMC with regards to Windows 10.
That's cool. Riddle me this. If you have a cable box, or satellite box connected to your TV and it's working as it should. Does anyone really look online about it ? Do you hunt down a forum to see if there is a discussion on the system ? If it works fine, there is no reason why people hunt down information on their DVR. This is what tells me about the closet WMC users, a lot of people install a simple tuner, and watch TV on their PC. WMC is a well built app in a lot of cases, if it's done right, and not many 3rd party conflicts (codecs, old drivers, etc), it can be made reliable, as much as a stand alone DVR. I had proof of it, as I had it pretty mastered back in the Vista w/TV pack days.
The big hobby people with the HTPC, might be here or over at avsfourm, the other % of users on the global scale who a good % do not read English. For 95%, Yea, maybe a little fudged but, pretty darn close, out of the 40-50 people I have discussed about WMC and who use it, almost all of them never looked up more than Microsoft's site (to address minor issues), most didn't even know TGB was even here.
As for the numbers of WMC users, Gabe the public face of Windows 10 posted those number to a blog, I remember reading it but, the exact location of it, I will have to look it up, it might of been on twitter too, I cant remember off the top of my head.
So, there is a possibility if people up in arms about it when they try to install Windows 10, I guess time will tell, maybe, maybe not...
JediDwight wrote:DavidinCT wrote:Well for a few years, I did custom home theater PC building and install based of Windows Media Center
That was one of my dreams, starting with MCE 2005, to build a consumer electronics company with Media Center as the entry point. The PC with a DVR and remote and simple remote-driven interface was the competitively affordable ecosystem for the digital home. Others like LifeWare and Niveus and Vidabox found a lot more success for a while. Ceton was going to make an HTPC with just Media Center on Windows Embedded.
Now with the New Normal, it's all gone away and the strategy is only Xbox goes in the living room, so that's got me aggravated.
I'm an outlier with using Media Center as the DVR for over the air TV, but I was also an early adopter who's used this solution with Cable on and off for like 10 years now.
I looked at virtualizing Media Center with Hyper-V this week, but it's not possible because RemoteFX with vGPU only works for servers. The only real solution to keep the Media Center DVR is to have one extra PC with Windows 7/8 (an inconvenience, more than a problem for me) or just not go to 10. Last time I looked at MC alternatives I was extremely unimpressed.
Microsoft's MediaRoom DVR MC-alike interface was
sold to Ericsson in 2013. Hopefully they will get how relatively easy it is to take code that worked in Windows 8 and make it qualified for Windows 10.
The other idea is that the Xbox OneGuide could easily be ported since the Xbox One has an x86-64 CPU and runs on a version of Windows 8/10, but I'd be shocked if Microsoft did that.
I'll admit it was pretty cool back in the day (Vista w/tv pack and release of Windows 7), I had a support channel as a small business owner. I had a few contacts on the eHome team (back on the OLD TGB before MS took it over), it was fun but, when I ran into a serious issue, I could make a call and these people knew their crap. I was very depressed when I talked to one of them and was told the eHome team was breaking up, I knew it a month or so before it came public but, was sworn to not say anything.
I even was able to access one of the very high end systems (I forgot the brand now) it was a $6K WMC system, I pulled it apart to see how they did it to trim WMC down, some cool stuff, no question, some little things I still use today. Although most tweaks they did are pretty much common knowledge if your a WMC fan and hunt down info (media mode and changing the shell).
Never tried WMC in Hyper-V but, have seen it run in ESXi (free) and esxi will run WMC in a VM and if you use network based tuners, it can be done that way. Personally I like the dedicated box on one TV (the main large screen tv), so I get all the advantages of using a HTPC with the full performance and not deal with the limitations of extenders. And I agree, no 3rd party product at this point can replace WMC.
I used a AT&T U-verse DVR a few times (one based on Mediaroom), it was nice, one would say it almost looked like WMC but, using a imbedded version of windows, it was a trimmed down (No other content, movie library, music, etc), WMC and tweaked for lower end hardware.
WMC COULD run on Windows 10, no question, With Modifying the ISO, you can get WMC to install and run. That proves it will run. Will there even be a live TV option in Windows 10 ? Nothing now said, or they will leave it to a 3rd party instead of their own option (that still is the BEST option with cablecards.)