Official: No WMC in Win 10

Discussion of getting WMC to work on Windows 10 (unsupported)
LuckyDay

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#161

Post by LuckyDay » Tue Jun 09, 2015 2:36 pm

A lot of WMC users are closet WMC users and this notification that comes down in Windows 7 and 8, does not show that detail right away, unless you click a link.
I think it's absolutely indisputable that there are not many WMC users in the world, especially relative to the amount of Windows users. There will be no fuss when Windows 10 is released outside of the people that are talking about it in these forums.

I have literally never met a single person in my day to day life who knew what WMC was before I told them about it, and everyone has it included in an OS that they use every day.

As has been pointed out many times here before, even the people who actually work in the cable and TV industry don't know what the software is.

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DavidinCT

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#162

Post by DavidinCT » Wed Jun 10, 2015 2:18 am

LuckyDay wrote:
I have literally never met a single person in my day to day life who knew what WMC was before I told them about it, and everyone has it included in an OS that they use every day.
Well for a few years, I did custom home theater PC building and install based of Windows Media Center, sold about 150-200 of them over the time I was running the small company. And I have shown tons of people and they love it.

So, I personally know maybe about 30-40 people (that I know now), that use it every day (not including people I chat with on here). Even today when I tell people (when TV subject comes up) they are blown away by what WMC can do over their cable box setup. 95% of the other people don't even visit this site or have never.

So maybe there will, maybe their wont. According to Microsoft in a check that was done in January of 2015, 6% of Windows users use Windows Media Center (this is more than just opening and closing by mistake). On a global scale (as WMC is available in many countries), anyway you look at it, that is LOT of people.

If even 2% of WMC user say something, it would be hundreds of thousand calls and tweets... so maybe and maybe not..
-Dave
Twitter @TheCoolDave

Windows Media Center certified and WMC MVP 2010 - 2012

ajhieb

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#163

Post by ajhieb » Wed Jun 10, 2015 7:05 am

DavidinCT wrote:Well for a few years, I did custom home theater PC building and install based of Windows Media Center, sold about 150-200 of them over the time I was running the small company. And I have shown tons of people and they love it.
Are you suggesting that is a typical experience for people, and that everyone has helped install 150-200 WMC setups? Because I think you are way way over to one side of the bell curve.

So, I personally know maybe about 30-40 people (that I know now), that use it every day (not including people I chat with on here). Even today when I tell people (when TV subject comes up) they are blown away by what WMC can do over their cable box setup. 95% of the other people don't even visit this site or have never.
Yeah, I've showed it to dozens of people too. Offered to help many of them set it up. One guy pulled the trigger, but eventually dropped it. All the rest though it was really cool, and went back home and continued to watch their Tivo or DirecTV or cableco DVR.

Where are you getting the 95% from because it sounds suspiciously like a made up number.
So maybe there will, maybe their wont. According to Microsoft in a check that was done in January of 2015, 6% of Windows users use Windows Media Center (this is more than just opening and closing by mistake). On a global scale (as WMC is available in many countries), anyway you look at it, that is LOT of people.


Link?
If even 2% of WMC user say something, it would be hundreds of thousand calls and tweets... so maybe and maybe not..
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.

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#164

Post by JediDwight » Wed Jun 10, 2015 12:21 pm

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.

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#165

Post by mike_ekim » Wed Jun 10, 2015 3:12 pm

DavidinCT wrote:According to Microsoft in a check that was done in January of 2015, 6% of Windows users use Windows Media Center (this is more than just opening and closing by mistake). On a global scale (as WMC is available in many countries), anyway you look at it, that is LOT of people.
Wut? Are you talking about the 2011 data? If you have Microsoft statistics showing 6% of Windows users are purposefully using MCE in 2015, please feel free to share a link. :D
2011 Business Insider Article wrote: In fact, only 6% of Windows users ever open Media Center, and most just look at it for a minute or two. As Sinofsky wrote:

Our opt-in usage telemetry shows that in July, Windows Media Center was launched by 6% of Windows 7 users globally with the heaviest usage in Russia, Mexico, and Brazil (frequency and time). However, most people are just looking around; only one quarter (25% of 6%) of these people used it for more than 10 minutes per session (individual averages), and in 59% of Media Center sessions (by these 6% of users) we see almost no activity (less than a minute or two of usage). TV was the most common scenario we observed, and not surprisingly, traditional media (DVD and CD) are less common (and declining over time) than streaming and file-based content. By comparison, Media Player (66% of Windows users in July) and IE (88%) are popular rendering engines for all types of media content, including an increased volume of "premium" and streaming content.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/microsof ... z3cffvlWyv
Back in 2011 MCE was mostly used for live TV. That changed, and today people mainly use it to watch DVDs (according to Microsoft). So in the future Microsoft will include an option that allows DVD playback. http://www.windowscentral.com/windows-1 ... ime-future Microsoft cites a decrease in usage, not just low usage, as the reason for discontinuing MCE. https://twitter.com/GabeAul/status/595325485309005824

So, to break it down: in 2011 only 1.5% of Windows users were using MCE to watch content (1/4 of 6%) and the majority of that was live TV. The numbers have declined so fewer people use MCE and when they do they watch DVDs more than live TV. If you have a basis for a different conclusion, feel free to share.
Last edited by mike_ekim on Wed Jun 10, 2015 3:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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DavidinCT

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#166

Post by DavidinCT » Wed Jun 10, 2015 3:19 pm

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.)
-Dave
Twitter @TheCoolDave

Windows Media Center certified and WMC MVP 2010 - 2012

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#167

Post by ajhieb » Wed Jun 10, 2015 4:09 pm

DavidinCT wrote: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.
Of course most people aren't out researching their cable box, but then again how many people do you know that have ever had problems with their cable boxes? They are appliances and as such are pretty much as plug and play as an oven or refrigerator. The only thing I'v ever seen anyone need help on for those things are getting remotes programmed. That said, I've never encountered a single person who discovered WMC all on their own, set it up all on their own, and had it run reliably for any length of time. 100% Without exception. Now, I'm willing to admit that my little slice of the world isn't necessarily a large enough sample size to make any concrete statements, but I do think it's large enough to make some generalizations, and I think that the vast majority of WMC users that are using it for a DVR have had some sort of web presence.

I could use your same logic and conclude that there are people that live on the dark side of the moon. Sure we can't see them, and there is no proof that they exist, but they could be there doing their moon-man thing not needing anything from us, and with no need to contact us, we'll never hear from them. I'm sorry, but I need something more than a highly suspect theory before I jump on board. They could exist isn't the same thing as they are likely to exist or that they do exist. Could there be a whole boatload of WMC users that have never made their presence known on the web, who are savvy enough to get everything setup and configured with no help, and are simultaneously so pants-on-head retarded that they'll blindly opt-in to a free upgrade without doing any research at all, and completely ignore the warnings about incompatibility? Sure. That's a possibility, but I see absolutely no evidence to support that.

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.
Last I saw most WMC users (not Windows users) were in English speaking countries. Obviously with most of the world not speaking English you're going to have some non-English speaking folks using WMC, but I don't think it's as many as you seem to imply.

I also don't believe for a second that a significant number people just stumbled into WMC and started using it as a DVR without any outside help, for no other reason than it requires having a tuner installed to do that... something that only the tiniest fraction of people have.

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.
Cool let me know what you find.
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...
Of course there is a possibility. It is an inevitability. If the internet had been around there would have been people online complaining when MS removed Reversi from the default games when they went from Win3.0 to Win3.1 The issue is what the scale of that complaining will be. I think it will be a whimper.

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#168

Post by Mpgrimm2 » Wed Jun 10, 2015 11:21 pm

Not that it would matter to Microsoft, but I for one would love to see all of us vote up and post our thoughts on their official community pages about the lack of MCE in Win10.

This seem like the most viewed/visited at the moment:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... 0752eff323

or do a search for
media center windows 10

We aren't the only ones starting to notice imo.

Here's what I posted on multiple MS Community threads:
I have a whole home Win7 Media Center setup using the Ceton ETH6, 6 Tuner CableCard setup. I built this HTPC specifically for use in my living room (3Ghz quad core, 16GB Ram, 4TB HD, 2GB PCIx Video, etc). and I use these tuners throughout my house with other win7 PCs and Xbox360/Ceton Extenders.

I have all my DVD's and RecordedTv stored on the main PC, as well as networked movies, pictures, etc. Everything is setup to use Logitech Harmony remotes, so it keeps my wife and everyone happy with how simple it is to use.

I also have a Hauppauge ATSC/NTSC/QAM usb Tuner for my laptop when travelling for business. Just connect to the cable jack in the hotel, setup the TvGuide, and it lets me use my Win7 Laptop as a DVR, etc. via Media Center when I am at the hotel for a few weeks.

When Win8 came out, I bought 2 Win8 Pro Licenses plus the Media Center add-on for each. The lack of a dedicated desktop mode and MS limiting the media center Extender functionality to only xbox360's, caused me to roll back both pc's to Win7 to support my Ceton Echo and my 360's.

Frankly, I really want to upgrade to Win10 just to be current and have a longer 'usage' window, but I don't see it as an option without Media Center (MCE). This irritates the crap out of me. Sure there are other options out there, but they don't come close to MCE or support true encrypted pay cable channels and LiveTV/DVR functions in one interface. Anyone that says otherwise clearly hasn't used or properly setup Media Center.

MCE is not just for DVD Playback; Windows Media Player, Kodi (XBMC), etc., just don't get it done.

Hopefully MS will put Media Center back into Win10, bring back the Media Center dev team, and add useful official updates to it such as hulu, AmazonPrime, etc. They could completely blow out the small set top box/Roku segment since so many people have a WinPC.

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#169

Post by JediDwight » Wed Jun 10, 2015 11:43 pm

ajhieb wrote:The issue is what the scale of that complaining will be.
I don't know if Microsoft can be shamed into doing anything. I guess we got the Start Menu back*.


* Start10/Classic Shell

ajhieb

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#170

Post by ajhieb » Thu Jun 11, 2015 12:35 am

JediDwight wrote:
ajhieb wrote:The issue is what the scale of that complaining will be.
I don't know if Microsoft can be shamed into doing anything. I guess we got the Start Menu back*.


* Start10/Classic Shell
The short answer is no, MS won't be shamed into anything by individual users. As much as desktop users complained about Win8 I suspect it was the corporate world that put their foot down and refused to retrain their entire workforce on how to use their new touchscreen UI without a touchscreen.

And to address the above post, there is zero chance that MS does any more development on WMC. Once the ehome team was disbanded and reassigned, that was pretty much the end of it. And MS has been pretty clear on the matter. They feel that the usage numbers for WMC don't justify adding it to Win10. Note they haven't said anything about how dedicated the user base is or how vocal they are. Simply that the numbers don't justify it. Screaming louder isn't likely to change those numbers any.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a grass roots effort to save your favorite product/show/whatever, but I'm also a fan of picking my battles, and I know with a level of certainty that approaches my faith in gravity, that Win8.1 was the last stop for the WMC train.

As far as keeping your current WMC setup working, all you need is guide data. If you want to hound MS about something constructive, hound them about keeping guide date in WMC for as long as possible. WMC will continue to work indefinitely as long as guide data is available. If you are truly using your WMC machine as a dedicated PC, if it's behind a decent firewall, you don't need all of the patches and whatnot. For an appliance-like device, the EoL is practically meaningless. Run the thing until the wheels fall off.

I drive a 2001 BMW and I love it. I've had it for years. The 2002 model is junk and looks awful. Much like this situation I didn't pester BMW and demand that they release the 2002 model that looked just like the 01 so that I could get a newer version of what I already had and liked. I just kept the one that I had and learned to live with it. Even now when it's well out of warranty it still runs, just like WMC will do after EoL. Things change, and sometimes you have to chose between what you have and what you want. As a consumer you have every right to shout from the rooftops what you want. I have no problem with that. But do it with the understanding that you are effectively fighting a lost cause.

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#171

Post by IownFIVEechos » Thu Jun 11, 2015 1:44 pm

Ohh no not the old 'car references'. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Give us our MEDIA CENTER BACK!

--Note, this was just for fun. I am not leaving Windows7, I am a hostage to the ECHOS!

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#172

Post by poit57 » Thu Jun 11, 2015 7:14 pm

ajhieb wrote:If you are truly using your WMC machine as a dedicated PC, if it's behind a decent firewall, you don't need all of the patches and whatnot. For an appliance-like device, the EoL is practically meaningless. Run the thing until the wheels fall off.
Unfortunately, that is not the situation for WMC users who have taken advantage of an extender in the living room while WMC is running on the primary PC in the home. I've personally set up 4 households to use WMC as their primary means of watching TV. Of those, my own home is the only one who actually has a dedicated HTPC that doesn't matter if I leave it running Windows 8.1.

All the other WMC users, that I know personally, use their primary PC in the home as the backend for Xbox 360 extenders. Until a suitable DVR replacement compatible with CableCard tuners comes along, which I hope the HDHomeRun DVR project will be, these users will be prevented from taking advantage of the free upgrade. While they may not necessarily benefit a great deal from upgrading to Windows 10, Microsoft's decision on this matter flies in the face of their goal to get users on the latest OS.

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#173

Post by seajunk » Thu Jun 11, 2015 7:15 pm

So maybe there will, maybe their wont. According to Microsoft in a check that was done in January of 2015, 6% of Windows users use Windows Media Center (this is more than just opening and closing by mistake). On a global scale (as WMC is available in many countries), anyway you look at it, that is LOT of people.
Those numbers were from a Sinosfsky announcement in 2011.
ZDNet did an article about The decline and fall of TiVo and Media Center the day after.

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#174

Post by spud72 » Thu Jun 11, 2015 7:27 pm

Had been looking forward to Windows 10 as currently running WMC on 3 windows 7 and 2 windows 8.1 PCs - with the free upgrade thought that it would be a great time to all be on the same OS.

Gutted by this news - so wont be upgrading now - there is nothing else I have found that comes close to WMC. It is not surprising that WMC users are declining as MS have not pushed or advertised it, I am sure if people knew about it they would use it as it provides so much.
Saying that I think that MS are missing a trick - with home automation growing and lots of catch up services there is so much more WMC could do, rebrand and relaunch it - who wants to go to lots of different web pages to watch TV. I hardly ever use WMC to watch DVDs so the offering of a DVD player doesn't do anything for me.

Having WMP & WMC never made sense to me, at risk of being unpopular WMP should have been replaced by WMC saying MS from having to maintain 2 products - people would then see what WMC could also offer.

The idea of W10 was to get people off of W7 & W8 on to the new platform - not sure why they don't offer it free to Vista & XP users too. Due to WMC not being included a lot of people will remain on W7 & W8 - sort of defeats the plan.

Hopefully MS will change their mind - how much will it cost them to recompile and maintain - not a huge amount of money I expect - fingers crossed that the EPG carries on going.

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#175

Post by spud72 » Thu Jun 11, 2015 9:02 pm

A German petition - anything has to be worth a try : http://www.mediacenterdontdie.com/petition/

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#176

Post by ajhieb » Fri Jun 12, 2015 1:56 am

Microsoft isn't forcing anyone to do anything and as of now they aren't taking away anything from anybody.

If you need to run WMC then stick with what you have. If you want to run Windows 10, then run that. If you want to do both, then buy a 2nd PC. Microsoft isn't stopping you from doing any of those things. You have all of the options you had prior to the Windows 10 announcement, plus one more.

If MS never announced Windows 10 (or Windows 8 for that matter) No one would be complaining and everybody would be happily running Windows 7 with smiles on their faces, but as soon as Microsoft gave you a choice all of the sudden some people are acting like they're getting screwed over. Grow up. Not only are some people complaining about the prospect of choosing to keep their current setup for free or upgrading to the newest OS for free they have the audacity to complain on behalf of other hypothetical idiots. (and yes, if you blindly upgrade your OS without reading any of the warning presented to you, only to discover that some of your old stuff won't work then you are very much an idiot and got exactly what you deserved)

Somebody was complaining about the car analogy earlier... fine. Somebody come up with another analogy where you would have similar expectations from a vendor. Were people starting twitter campaigns against Denon and Onkyo when they dropped component video connectivity in favor of going all HDMI on their main receivers? Not that I saw. No, they recognized that it was the evolution of the industry and if they wanted to continue using their old component A/V devices they'd have to stick with the old equipment. But maybe if Denon and Onkyo were giving away their new receivers for free more people would have complained about it. :roll:

Is there a single aspect in life where this sort of behavior would be considered normal? I can't think of a single one.

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#177

Post by Mpgrimm2 » Fri Jun 12, 2015 2:33 am

It seems many are aware of the obvious facts and options, hence the disappointment. Considering this site is "TheGreenButton" and it's history, I'm rather surprised by the lengthy rebuttals I see here to many users expressed disappointment on the lack of Media Center going forward.

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#178

Post by ajhieb » Fri Jun 12, 2015 2:50 am

I understand disappointment. That's a reasonable response. But not everyone is stopping at disappointment. Some people are acting as if they have been grievously harmed by Microsoft. That is not a reasonable response, regardless of what community you're a part of.

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#179

Post by bob_p » Fri Jun 12, 2015 12:43 pm

In our house today, we have 9 PCs running Windows 8.1 and a Windows Server running Essentials, along with 6 Xbox 360s used as extenders.

One of the PCs is dedicated to WMC and I have WMC installed on my desktop (to watch TV) and on my laptop & tablet (to watch recorded programs while away from the house).

Microsoft will be giving away free upgrades to Windows 10 for a year. After that, they will probably go back to charging for the upgrade.

While I wish Microsoft was going to continue supporting WMC in W10, they haven't added new features in many years, and at some point, we risk having problems with the program guide (which has been offline multiple times in the last year).

As of today, my plan is upgrade all of the PCs, except the dedicated WMC system, to Windows 10. I'll start running the SiliconDust DVR software as soon as the beta becomes available - and run that in parallel with the Windows 8.1 WMC & Xboxes. Realistically, I'm not expecting the initial release from SD to be a completely functional replacement for WMC - though I hope that they will have enough functionality by next June to allow me to pull the plug on my last WMC system - upgrade it to Windows 10 - and shift completely to the SD DVR software.

While I've invested in 6 Xbox 360s as "extenders" - it isn't clear if those will work in the SD DVR environment. At this point, they are relatively old technology - and while it is possible to get new or used Xbox 360s for low prices today - at some point, they will also be obsolete. So if an alternate device is needed as an "extender" for the SD DVR system, as long as the price is reasonable - I'll likely also be ditching my Xbox 360s in the next year.

And, if SD's DVR software fails to be the "WMC replacement" - then I'll likely keep my WMC system on 8.1 for longer.

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krbriesc

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Location: Michigan, USA

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#180

Post by krbriesc » Fri Jun 12, 2015 3:11 pm

Count me as one who uses WMC but only contributes when to a forum when my viewing preferences are assaulted.

To work around the omission of WMC in Win 10 run a dual boot setup. I have an evaluation copy of Win 10 running on my Win 7 backup machine with good results. I keep that computer as a backup to the Win 8.1 serving as my main and only way to do TV. For me the Win 10 has a better, more MAC like interface therefore I plan to make my main computer a dual boot when Win 10 launches.

For reference; my Win 7 runs 2 two tuner Hauppauge cards presently used for OTA with 2 TB of storage. The operating systems run on separate SSDs.
My homebrew 8 runs 2 four tuner Ceton PCIe cards with 10 TB of storage on 4 HHD. The operating systems will use two SSDs as well.

I have time shifted most everything I watch since the days of the first VCR, TiVo, DTV / DVR and now WMC for cable. WMC is high maintenance requiring good computer skills but, in my opinion, the best overall system as of today. If Microsoft eventually kills WMC something will take its place.

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