XBMC vs Windows 7 Media Centre
#1
Question 
What benefits do I have if I run XBMC as opposed to Win7 MC. As far as I see it does the same thing, but Win7 has live tv and PVR facilities.

Am I missing something?

Cheers.
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#2
MC is an option if you don't mind a generic environment with little extra. XBMC, while it requires more work, includes things like fan art, episode/movie thumbnails, plot and episode descriptions, trailers, subtitles, and many other things made possible depending what skins and functionality you decide to install. Once you've seen a proper XBMC setup in action, you'll never settle for MC.

It's a higher learning curve, but it's worth every minute.
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#3
ROFL...

Get XBMC.

1. You've got a lot more privacy than you'll have with a MS product.
2. Provided you have the horsepower to play it, XBMC can handle just about any file format out of the box. Sure, MC will auto-download codecs, but it's dumb about it.
3. Protected content...MS is much more anal about which files they will play.
4. XBMC is community-driven...MS is cash-driven. This makes XBMC much more flexible.
5. As qdif mentioned, XBMC has a lot more options when it comes to artwork. All you need to do is point XBMC at your files, tell it to scrape, and it will get covers/posters/descriptions/artist thumbnails/the kitchen sink in relation to each and every one of your movies/tv shows/songs.
6. Plugins...I've never tried with MC (because I hate it), but XBMC can go on Hulu, youtube, google video, the weather channel...there are a ton of different things you can make it do.
7. Also, I'm pretty sure XBMC has a plugin that allows certain kinds of Live TV interactions as well, including recording.
8. Skinning...we can skin XBMC without having to hack the hell out of it, and the results are astonishing. Check out Aeon, or Confluence, or Serenity, or any of the skins for that matter. Can MC do that?
9. The community. If there's something you want XBMC to do that it doesn't...submit a request. If it's a good idea, you'll see it implemented. "Hi, I'm digitalhigh, and XBMC was my idea."
10. Did I mention that it's not made by MicrosoftHuh
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#4
Someone should do a mc vs xbmc video with a screen capture.
Basically Here is your movie
or
Here is you movie "I like that actor what else is he in" click oh cool Its like I am in a video shop how pretty". This is cool xbmc will not invade my pc and is fully customizable.
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#5
Booman Wrote:Someone should do a mc vs xbmc video with a screen capture.
Basically Here is your movie
or
Here is you movie "I like that actor what else is he in" click oh cool Its like I am in a video shop how pretty". This is cool xbmc will not invade my pc and is fully customizable.

What, you mean "selling" the idea of using XBMC versus MC?

Once you know what the two can do, IMHO, it's like trying to sell someone a swiss army knife versus a butter knife with a bugged handle.
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#6
Okay, cheers I'll look into it. Could you give me the name of the Live TV and recorder thing please Big Grin
Cheers.
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#7
there is no VS...XBMC all the wayWink
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#8
I guess this is a good thread to try for an answer. I recently purchased a Acer Aspire Revo AR3610-U9022 Intel Atom 330(1.60GHz) 2GB DDR2 160GB NVIDIA ION graphics Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. It is intended to be a Media Player PC in Master B.R. Main PC down stairs is Intel I5 Windows 7 64 bit. It by the way plays all HD movies fine in Media Center. After doing all the stuff that is recommended, remove bloat, update drivers, turn off unneeded services and startup processes etc etc, I have not been totally succesful with playing HD 1080P files, (mainly ripped blu ray to MKV, all using same rip software). I have loaded the latest shark007 32 bit and 64 bit packs. Have selected recommended settings in both 64 bit and 32 bit Shark. Using Windows 7 Media Center, streamed or from Acer's hard drive, all 1080p content is jittery or totally unwatchable. 720P content playes fine. Checked cpu resources for 1080p attempts and it was averaging around 45% on semi watchable movies. Did not check cpu on movies that were totally unwatchable. I then tried the latest XBMC player build that has DXVA support. With that support turned on, half of the Blue ray rips (in MKV with same file size as original blue ray files) played excellently!!! The other half that I tried though had random moistly green pixles on bottom half of screen. CPU usage was averaging around 10%. I then tried Boxxee, which says it has gpu accelaration. Two movies that would not work in XBMC worked, others that worked on XBMC did not. CPU usage percent was low also. Was also thinking of trying Media Center classic. Ultimately, it looks like if I could get DXVA to work I should be able to play these HD videos in either XBMC on Media Center. Sorry for the long post but more details might help some one to help me. How can I get these HD movies to play flawlessly XBMC or (please don't shoot)in some other player. Thanks for any assistance.

By the way, I like what I see with XBMC so far,(if I can get it to work all of the time) but still have not figured out how to get movie postesr and info to show up on the screen.
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#9
The only thing stopping me moving *back* to XBMC from MC is the lack of Live TV support. I'm not sure you should be able to call it a "media center" if it cant even do live tv out of the box.
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#10
@reh1956

Probably get alot of suggestions to use Linux- that seems like the best OS for those Revos for 1080 playback.

I have that same bottom distortion though only with AMT trailers...I believe DXVA is still a work in progress, I'm waiting on 10.5 before I investigate further...
Image

Check out The Carmichael - A Skin For XBMC

Check out Night - A Skin For XBMC

Check out Unfinished - A Skin For XBMC
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#11
Lomax Wrote:The only thing stopping me moving *back* to XBMC from MC is the lack of Live TV support. I'm not sure you should be able to call it a "media center" if it cant even do live tv out of the box.

Live-Tv is possible and running. Look for XBMC PVR and VDR settings.

Regards:
Marky.
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#12
I wouldn't even pee on media centre if it was on fire.

All what you need to do is look at some of the skins for XBMC and see that it ooozes sex appeal.

Media centre, like being kissed by your old granny with her teeth out, and french kissing you in front of your mates.
I'm not a newbie. I always act this dumb.

Home Cinema Setup
-------------------
37 inch TV - Intel I3 530 @ 2.9GHZ - 4 Gig Memory - Silverstone home cinema case (silver)
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#13
Many years ago I modded my Xbox and loved Xbox Media Player on it. A few months later Xbox Media Center was born and it was amazing (especcialy for that time). Unfortunatly, HD material doesn't work on the old Xbox, so I was forced to move on after many happy years of xbox/xbmc Smile

XBMC on the PC was far from finished and not useble for me. So I (of course) tried many, many, manyyy mediacentersoftware to get what XBMC offered on the old Xbox for that many years..

I didn't find anything that was as good as what I was used to, and it was frustrating. Did use Windows Media Center for a few moths, but it is so limited when talking about fanart/thumbs and other candy. It also sucks with some mediatypes and it's just boring..

I finally settled with Mediaportal, which was the best choice at that time. Problem with that one is the fact that the Skin Engine isn't as fluid/nice as I was used to with XBMC. But it was better then any other alternative, so I used that one for quite some time..

Luckly for me the XBMC team developed a multi-platform Mediacenter in a amazing timeperiod, and now that it works like I want, I think I never switch to other Mediacenter software again... Smile
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#14
Lomax Wrote:The only thing stopping me moving *back* to XBMC from MC is the lack of Live TV support. I'm not sure you should be able to call it a "media center" if it cant even do live tv out of the box.

You can call it a "media center" without live TV support. You just can't call it a tuner or a DVR. I have a satellite DVR sitting beside my XBMC box. To me, they serve absolutely different purposes. One is like a radio, the other like an MP3 player. Sure, I record stuff off of the radio, but sometimes the DJ talks over the intro or the quality isn't as good. Everything on the MP3 player is pristine, though.
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#15
mcborzu Wrote:@reh1956

Probably get alot of suggestions to use Linux- that seems like the best OS for those Revos for 1080 playback.

I have that same bottom distortion though only with AMT trailers...I believe DXVA is still a work in progress, I'm waiting on 10.5 before I investigate further...


I installed the version referenced in this link:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=70436
and then selected DXVA from the settings play back (video options somewhere, not hard to find).
I can now play 1080p mkv perfectly on my ION running windows 7 64bit. Before using DXVA it wouldn't really play any 1080p.
Keep in mind that release isn't a full release and is still in testing.
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