Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005: Feature and Performance Investigation
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 12, 2004 12:19 PM EST- Posted in
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Getting Ready to Watch TV
The majority of the MCE 2005 setup process remains unchanged from previous versions, with minor tweaks here and there.
One of the most important features of the Media Center interface continues to be the ability to setup all of the Media Center options using nothing more than the remote control, which is obviously true for configuring your TV settings.
First you must confirm your region, which Media Center reads from the region your copy of Windows is set to.
Media Center 2005 has an automatic TV signal configuration wizard which works very well. It seems to have no problem detecting whether you have a cable box, direct cable or antenna. The automatic setup can even configure multiple tuners, which we will discuss shortly.
If there is any discrepancy between the automatic configuration and what you've got, you can manually configure your configuration, although we required no such intervention during our testing.
Next up after you've configured your TV signal is to setup the program guide. The Media Center program guide is one of the strongest points of MCE, considering it is the fastest and one of the most sleek interfaces available on a PVR/DVR platform. For anyone who has ever used a Tivo or ReplayTV, the speed and aesthetics of the Media Center guide itself is worth taking a look at.
The setup is pretty simple, first you've got to agree to the 58 page Terms of Service agreement. Just pressing down on the remote will scroll through each one of the 58 pages, so you'll want to hit up instead to jump directly to the I do not agree/I agree options. Don't tell us you actually read those things.
Media Center will decide what guide data to download for you based on two pieces of information: your zip code, and then by selecting your cable provider.
Once you've selected your provider, Media Center will download up to 14 days of TV listings and you'll be done with the program guide setup process. By default, Media Center will use your internet connection to keep its guide data up to date automatically, and it does a fine job of doing so.
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glennpratt - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
^ I thought the same thing... How could they have possibly thought that was a good idea?ViRGE - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
Ok, you know the world has gone downhill when even MS is throwing in one of those dancers...glennpratt - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
Yes it works with set top boxes, using an IR Blaster. Though my remote box only has ports for two IR Blasters... I guess having 3 set top boxes attached to the same computer would be overkill. I wonder if it supports 3 different sources like digital cable + DirecTV + OTA HD. That would be sweet. I may have to try that out if I ever get my grubby hands on 2005.haci - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
It looks like BeyondTV can handle 6 tuners just fine:http://www.snapstream.com/community/articles/medus...
It would be interesting to see how the CPU requirements under BeyonTV and Windows MCE compare while using hardware encoders.
I would have expected the requirements to be similar, since most of the work is done by the encoder card anyway, but the MCE review seems to imply high CPU utilization under MCE.
Would it be possible to do some sort of comparison?
louisb - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
Will this work with a digital cable set-top box? Or is there a tuner card thats works with digital cable?Cygni - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
On page 13: "The movies on demand features are provided by three companies: , and . "Man, thats the same company three times! They are dominating! heh.
The multituner support is a big step forward, and i cant believe how polished everything seems to be. My current rig doesnt have the unf (or the right tuners) to get into the MCE game just yet, but it certainly looks very appealing now.