Anyone running Media Center in a Virtual Machine?

[barnabas1969]

I don't have any experience with VM's. From what I've read, there are limitations on hardware when running a VM. I'd appreciate any input on running Media Center in a VM... especially on the subject of hardware limitations. For example, how well does Media Center work in a VM when a TV is directly-connected to the video adapter (Media Center needs exclusive control of the video adapter), or when there are internal tuner cards like the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250.

I would expect that a VM would work fine with network tuners like the SiliconDust HD HomeRun or HomeRun Prime. My main two concerns are when a TV is connected directly to the PC, and when there are internal tuners like the ones mentioned above.

Any and all info from people who have tried running Media Center on a VM is appreciated.

Thanks,
Brian

[DanH]

I have not tried it, but this is my understanding...

All hardware has to have special drivers that allow virualizing. I doubt you are going to find this available for any tuner cards. For the scenario you are suggesting, you would also need complete control of the vide card...I am not aware of any way to do this as the video card is always controlled by the virtualization layer as it is the access to controlling the server.

What you should be able to do is the following:
Media Center running under virtualized Windows environment (ie: Windows 7 Home Premium)
Network connected tuners (HD Homerun, etc...)
Xbox 360 or other extenders connected to TVs
All recording occurs on the virtualized server. TVs get content over the network via an extender.

[asm495]

I did experiment with this about 18 months ago when I wanted to run one WHS box which also used Media Center.

I could get Media Center running fine in a Virtual Machine. However, I only used Extenders to connect to it. The issue came with getting TV tuners to work properly. I could not get PCI-passthrough to work for my tuners and I did not really want to use USB tuners. I also did not want to have to deal with the complexity of DVB Link. If you are using a network tuner then I think you may find it works well for you.

In the end though I decided just to run a Windows 7 box as my server using Drive Bender to pool drives and duplicating files. Acronis handles the backups.

[cram501]

I run my WMC in a VM using VMWare's vSphere (ESXI). It works fine with extenders and the HD Homerun.

Theoretically in ESXI you can pass the video card/tuners directly to the VM if your motherboard supports VT-D. Mine does but I haven't tried it. Whether it works will depend on all of the hardware involved. It could be interesting getting it working.

[barnabas1969]

Thanks Dan, that's what I was thinking too. Just wanted to find out if there's something I didn't already know about. What I'm interested in possibly doing is running Linux on the same box with Win7. But since the video card cannot be controlled exclusively when Windows is run in a VM, I'll have to explore other options.

One option for the short-term would be to run VM's on my desktop PC. It doesn't have any special hardware. My aim here is to run Zone Minder to monitor some security cameras. I have an old laptop that I was hoping to use for this purpose (running only Linux, no VM's)... but from what I've read, that old laptop won't be powerful enough to monitor more than 2 or 3 cameras max (with motion detection). My hope was to be able to use a computer that uses very little electricity, and I already have this old laptop (Celeron 1.5GHz, 1GB RAM) sitting around not being used.

I've ordered a camera that should be here Thursday. I think I'll start out by installing Ubuntu on the old laptop, then install the Zone Minder software and give it a go. If it works well, then I'll consider installing a VM on my desktop PC.

[JazJon]

I just got a new Mac Mini i7. VT is confirmed enabled/working.

How do we get Digital Cable Adviser to pass the Graphics test in the VM? Should I follow this link or is their a better way?
http://www.missingremote.com/guide/over ... a-center-7

The Intel HD 4000 passes and all works fine if I do a BootCamp install of Winodws 8 Pro (not in a VM)

I just posted the question in the VMware forum as well:
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/432003

[trini0]

How do we get Digital Cable Adviser to pass the Graphics test in the VM? Should I follow this link or is their a better way?
http://www.missingremote.com/guide/over ... a-center-7

I believe this hack is the only way..

[JazJon]

How do we get Digital Cable Adviser to pass the Graphics test in the VM? Should I follow this link or is their a better way?
http://www.missingremote.com/guide/over ... a-center-7

I believe this hack is the only way..

Ok I guess that's good enough, luckily I don't have HBO/Showtime etc, and all my standard channels are able to be recorded with out restrictions.

[AnthonyB]

Wouldn't hyper-v do it with RemoteFX?

[tony_park]

Thanks Dan, that's what I was thinking too. Just wanted to find out if there's something I didn't already know about. What I'm interested in possibly doing is running Linux on the same box with Win7. But since the video card cannot be controlled exclusively when Windows is run in a VM, I'll have to explore other options.

One option for the short-term would be to run VM's on my desktop PC. It doesn't have any special hardware. My aim here is to run Zone Minder to monitor some security cameras. I have an old laptop that I was hoping to use for this purpose (running only Linux, no VM's)... but from what I've read, that old laptop won't be powerful enough to monitor more than 2 or 3 cameras max (with motion detection). My hope was to be able to use a computer that uses very little electricity, and I already have this old laptop (Celeron 1.5GHz, 1GB RAM) sitting around not being used.

I've ordered a camera that should be here Thursday. I think I'll start out by installing Ubuntu on the old laptop, then install the Zone Minder software and give it a go. If it works well, then I'll consider installing a VM on my desktop PC.

Hi

I have a VM setup on my WHS system, and its quite stuttery at times, moving the mouse around etc - not sure if this would traanspose to a similar issue with media center navigation, and recording missing frames etc.

HTH
Tony

[trini0]

Wouldn't hyper-v do it with RemoteFX?

Possibly. I haven't attempted RemoteFX as yet. But it should work also.
My response was a blanket answer for all hypervisors..
If anyone wants to attempt this with WMC on HyperV, keep in mind the only possible operating system you can use is Win7 Enterprise.
Win8Pro is out of the question, as you can only enable RemoteFX on Enterprise client OSes..

[JazJon]

Wouldn't hyper-v do it with RemoteFX?

Possibly. I haven't attempted RemoteFX as yet. But it should work also.
My response was a blanket answer for all hypervisors..
If anyone wants to attempt this with WMC on HyperV, keep in mind the only possible operating system you can use is Win7 Enterprise.
Win8Pro is out of the question, as you can only enable RemoteFX on Enterprise client OSes..

To be honest, I'm not even sure how Hyper-V works. I've only played with VMware and Virtual Box before. I've heard "RemotFX" thrown around a bit as well, but don't know how that works as well. I'm using Windows 8 Pro and you said it's out of the question though. I found a walk through video on youtube that helped me understand easily what to expect. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUtO2CSc6Bg
So if we install Windows Server 2012 Essentials on our HTPC, can we install Windows 8 Media Center then? (but... no way around the HDCP Digital Adviser though without the hack eh?)
I would hope the Hyper-V gives better raw direct access to hardware than VMware can.
Interesting.

[pwherman73]

I'm running Media Center in qemu/kvm and had an issue adding extenders (XBOX360) - I found that configuring the extenders fails (cannot connect to entender) when using macvtap interfaces. Instead, create a bridge on your host for your interface and then use the bridge as NIC for your VM client.

In case of Ubuntu as the host OS, to configure the bridge, edit /etc/network/interfaces

change:

auto en01 #Primary network device (could be eth0 etc.)
iface en01 inet dhcp

to:

auto br0
iface br0 inet dhcp
bridge_ports eno1
bridge_stp off
bridge_maxwait 5

[tomdoyle1948]

I have run media center in Hyper-V and VirtualBox on a Windows 10 computer. In both cases I installed Windows 7 Pro 64bit in the VM.

The main problem with Hyper-V (unlike Virtual PC 2007) is that it does not directly support audio. It is suppose to work with an RDC connection but that needs a PRO version OS so I have not tried the RDC audio fix. Other than the audio problem WMC works on Hyper-V.

I have also used VirtualBox on a Windows 10 computer to run WMC. It works great - easier setup than Hyper-V and no audio problems.

I have not tried recording but it works great playing back my existing library.