What frontend software is the best to use?
This question is subject to personal taste really. A cop-out answer perhaps, but with some wonderful skins available for Media Centre or Media Portal, any one of them could suit your mood, room colour or simply the day of the week it happens to be when you decide.
Below we as a forum have completed information on the the various frontends that could be used, as well as links to those members of AVForums that have used that specific frontend.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Microsoft Media Centre Written by Stephen Neal Vista
Vista Media centre is included for free with Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate.
XP
There is also a version of Windows XP, called Windows XP Media Center Edition, which includes the Media Center application and is heavily based on XP Professional. XP Media Center Edition, if still available, was only available as an OEM purchase - though it was opened up to small system builders (and widely available from Amazon, ebuyer, scan, dabs etc.)
Media Center is not available as a separate purchase - it is only available bundled with the above OSs.
Images supplied by dazza32
[IMGlink]http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p42/dazza32/VMCdvdlibary.jpg[/IMGlink]
[IMGlink]http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p42/dazza32/VMCdvdlibaryinfo-1.jpg[/IMGlink]
Tuner Support
As standard these support analogue OR digital terrestrial (aka Freeview) capture cards only, though they support two tuners to allow recording of two channels at the same time, or live viewing of one show whilst recording another. There are registry hacks to increase the number of tuners above 2. Media Center can support IR blasters to allow Sky or Cable set-top boxes to be remotely controlled by Media Center, and used with an analogue capture card.
There are also some DVB-C (cable) and DVB-S (satellite) solutions that have specially written drivers that will pretend to be DVB-T (freeview) tuners and will work with Vista and XP Media Center with a bit of work (including encrypted services)
Vista TV Pack
There is an OEM-only (currently only available to big vendors it appears) additional upgrade for Vista Media Center, called Vista TV Pack, which adds much better support for MHEG5 "Press Red" interactivity on Freeview (and with a registry hack MHEG 5 interactive on Freesat as well) and also useful things like DVB Subtitles. It also adds native DVB-S (though not for encrypted content or DVB-S2) satellite reception. TV Pack also changes the Recorded TV format from DVR-MS to WTV (to allow things like subtitles to be recorded) - but many 3rd party apps are DVR-MS only at the moment. TV Pack - like Vista Media Center and XP Media Center - only supports MPEG2 TV broadcast, but TV Pack can be persuaded to display H264 (and thus BBC HD) with a hacked DLL, and ITV HD can also be received with the MHEG5 registry tweak. The TV pack fully supports multiple tuner types - so you can have both DVB-T and DVB-S tuners in the same install. Vista Home Premium is limited to 2 tuners of each type, whilst Ultimate allows 4 tuners of each type. The previous multi-tuner registry hacks no longer work AIUI.
Remote Control
The official Microsoft USB IR Media Center remote control and receiver (including IR Blaster), and the Philips model, are the best IR solutions for Media Center, many other 3rd party IR solutions have limitations (no alphabet entry or coloured button support for example)
There are a number of excellent movie jukebox plug-ins for managing movie and TV show collections within Media Center, such as MyMovies and VideoBrowser.
The Green Button The Green Button - Your Media Center Community has a very good guide to TV Pack and Vista Media Center and BBC HD as well as lots of useful discussions about various Media Center topics.
Multi-room etc.
Whilst it is not currently possible to stream Live TV from one Media Center to another, it IS possible to stream Live TV (and watch Recorded TV) on Media Center Extenders (from Linksys for example) or an Xbox 360. Extenders have much more limited codec support - and don't always play files that play happily on Media Center PCs. Cabled networking is recommended.
Windows 7 also promises improved Media Center support, and is expected not to require hacks to support H264 broadcasts, and has improved facilities for sharing Recorded TV folders between networked Media Center PCs.
Downloads Standby Tool -
Added by thepharcyde Slick Solutions - MCE Standby Tool (MST) - Should resolve all standby issues, i.e. shutting down all fans. PC turns on/off in seconds.
Builds using Vista Media Centre
Tony Yates -
http://www.avforums.com/forums/home-...-me-build.html
Stephen Neal -
http://www.avforums.com/forums/home-...tpc-build.html
Deksawyer -
deksawyer's Omaura TF8 hi-def slim media player build
Huggy -
http://www.avforums.com/forums/home-...tpc-build.html
x1nick -
http://www.avforums.com/forums/home-...tpc-build.html --------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vista Media Centre Mods - MediaBrowser
Groove has written a supurb guide to getting this up and running on your VMC based HTPC, and has been very helpful in his posts to those needing that extra bit of info to get someone else up and running. If you did'nt quite like any of the MediaPortal skins and VMC does exactly what you want but love the fanart based skins, then read Grooves post and just look at the pictures below.
Info from Groove -
"Mediabrowser is a plugin for VMC. VMC is all still there, but MB is an option to launch from the standard VMC interface. So it doesnt replace it, just adds functionality to it." http://www.avforums.com/forums/home-...mised-vmc.html Images supplied by Groove
[IMGlink]http://www.iamgroove.co.uk/myimages/new%20mb/menu2.jpg[/IMGlink]
[imglink]http://www.iamgroove.co.uk/myimages/new%20mb/cf1.jpg[/imglink]
[imglink]http://www.iamgroove.co.uk/myimages/new%20mb/tv.jpg[/imglink]
Builds using MediaBrowser
Groove -
http://www.avforums.com/forums/home-...mised-vmc.html and
http://www.avforums.com/forums/home-...all-build.html
Daveybryce -
http://www.avforums.com/forums/home-...ld-thread.html *Nov 09 Update* Davy is now running Media Browser on Windows 7. Link updated. "Windows 7 MCE has come long way since XP MCE and Vista MCE in terms of it's codec support, native DVB-S/S2 support and intuitive interface. The codec support list is vast and requires hardly any external codec packs and directshow filters to get it to work. So for a first time user it's ideal.
My thread shows the overall look that can be acheived, using various applications and tips on software to use, also how to add in 3rd party codec support should you wish to do so. There are plenty of links on the first page to help you find things easily."