![]() Support forums are a great way to run around in circles. mainly because when something happens, your kinda lost and their lack of documentation on pretty much anything is insulting to customers. ![]() I've never been a big fan of Apple's walled garden concept. Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire, etc All of these have pros and cons and in some cases are heavily marketed by what content they offer if you get the device. With this sort of change in mindset, I started to look into home media platforms and devices. I just want to watch "The Great British Baking Show" with my wife. When you want to consume movies, watch TV or listen to music, you don't need that "do everything" OS like Windows. There is a sense of beauty and peace with having a device ("computer") that does one task or maybe a few and does those tasks extremely well. In today's world everything is a computer in some shape or form. The insides of each unit may have been complex but each unit had a specific task and was designed to do that task well. Why? I think back to the days of the component stereo where back in the 60's and 70's the radio was a dedicated unit, the amp which connected to the speakers was separate which connected to a turntable. well Windows! In other words, to use Windows Media Center I have to drag along all the other pains that come with Windows. Windows is a versatile OS, more so than anything else available but it's not the best OS for consuming content considering that Windows Media Center is dependent on. It's easy to get annoyed with some of the mistakes Microsoft has made with Windows over the years but this really bothered me. All the updates (Flash, Silverlight are in there too), patches and codecs finally caught up with a processor that 5 years ago could easily handle the job. While I did suspect network latency, I didn't experience any of these issues on any of my other equipment. one would think that this amount of horse power would be able to provide a decent streaming experience. ![]() The processor in my media box was an AMD Phenom II X4 (CPU benchmark score of 4016) which is decent. I did a reinstall and this time, things didn't get better. These is par for the course with Windows in general and if you have worked with Windows for any amount of time, you know that over time, it just needs a fresh start. Similar things have happened in the past and the usual course of action. When watching Netflix the audio and video would be out of sync. This became a weekly occurrence after a while. ![]() I would have to perform a hard reboot to get it to come back. I typically leave my home theater computer on and there would be days when I would come home to watch a show, turn the TV on and would get nothing but a black screen. I started to notice subtle things in the performance and responsiveness of my media center box. I wasn't too phased by this since Windows 7 is stable and should be around for a while longer. Microsoft lost interest Windows Media Center as a platform and ultimately announced that it would not be part of Windows 10. I did use a few specialty apps to provide remote management and streaming of the media box such as RemotePotato and StreamToMe. A Dell gyration remote control and a Logitech diNovo Edge bluetooth keyboard completed the setup. ![]() I didn't need any apps or proprietary device because it was a Windows box and despite the fact that Microsoft axed WMC, it worked really well as platform for watching movies and television. For the last 5 years this setup has exceeded my expectations ability to record over the air HDTV (ATSC), stream Netflix and watch any web based TV stream. top-of-the-line dedicated home theater computer based on Windows Media Center (WMC), custom Moneual Black Aluminum MonCaso, Hauppauge dual TV tuner card, plenty of RAM and an SSD drive for the OS and a few terabytes for music (remember MP3's!?) and movies. When there are commercials begging you to make the switch, we get it! If you haven't cut the cable yet, there are a lot of options to choose from. ![]()
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