Media Center not a viable proposition

[StephenR]

I thought I would post my experiences of Media Center so far to see what other people think, as I have just about had enough of the whole thing. I am now on my FOURTH Media Center PC from two difference suppliers, but all have had SERIOUS flaws which I can only only put down to Media Center not being up to the job. I decided to buy off-the-shelf to avoid problems people have had with self-build systems - how wrong I was! The following are the problems I have observed so far:

1) TV quality is unacceptable (DVB-T). I expected it to be as good as a Freeview box, but it just isn't. Despite entering that "EnableRefreshRateChange" registry setting (in itself a ludicrous thing to have to do) I still see uneven horizontal pans. Unacceptable for something costing this amount of money.

2) Ripping CDs is a tortuous process. I have done about 10 so far, and in each case I had to insert the CD several times before Media Center could be persuaded to fetch the track listings. Again, this is a basic feature that just DOES NOT WORK!

3) Finally, the most serious issues I have had are with general stability. On several ocassions I have had the system keel over completely requiring a hard reset. Today when I cam in from work and tried to view live TV I got a "video files are corrupt" error requiring a restart. Pathetic. If I wrote software this buggy I would be fired.

All in all I am VERY disappointed with the whole Media Center experience. I am on the verge of giving up and getting a Freeview PVR. Are my experiences typical? Have I just been unfortunate? Does Media Center actually work reliably? I am perplexed.

I've had issues, but now I'm ok with mine...

Ripping CD's... use Windows Media Player or iTunes instead

TV Quality... mines arguably better that most Sky channels but yep it's not stunning... I'm guessing hdtv won't shake my world in the way they are saying either...

Stability... used to crash 2 times a day, now 2 times a week since I disabled my onboard wireless (I run an artisan btw if anyone else has stability problems, try that...) and replaced with a USB one!

It's not got the stability of an appliance, which I would like, but it's a 'bit' more stable than my Buffallo Linktheatre which it more than fills the boots of...

If all you are using it for is TV, then the freeview PVR would probably be more stable...

But...
how would you archive?
Look at photos on your network?
Music?
Ripped DVDs?
Downloaded films (if anyone did do that of course with it being illegal and all)?
Email?
Internet?
MSN?
Work? - yeah I said it

etc.

[Andyuk911]

I understand what you are saying and agree with you.

I have stability problems with hangs ... I don't have problems as you describe.

I still like MCE too much and I will get it fully fixed.

Does anybody know how you speak to Microsoft .. to be clear is there a better number to use ?

[Spacecat]

I built mine october 2004, cost me about £400 all in all

has NEVER missed a recording due to a crash, i have forgot to set it myself!

Picture quality is as good as the direct cable connection.

It turns itself in and out of standby to do recordings without a hitch.

music and pictures are easy to manage.

Most important of all the Missus can control it perfectly using the remote control without any input from me.

Its more reliable than any TV recording device i have ever had and the quality is superb.

No i dont work for microsoft

If you set it up properly it is very very good.
If not ? well you know the answer to that

[springtide]

Originally Posted by Spacecat

I built mine october 2004, cost me about £400 all in all

has NEVER missed a recording due to a crash, i have forgot to set it myself!

Picture quality is as good as the direct cable connection.

It turns itself in and out of standby to do recordings without a hitch.

music and pictures are easy to manage.

Most important of all the Missus can control it perfectly using the remote control without any input from me.

Its more reliable than any TV recording device i have ever had and the quality is superb.

No i dont work for microsoft

If you set it up properly it is very very good.
If not ? well you know the answer to that

Same here - apart from my Terratec 2400i card ! Running with just a Black Gold I had no problems with my self build. In comparison - I have to reset my Pioneer DBR-TF100 DBT-T set-top box about every two weeks and a friend has a Nokia set-top box which he says is even worse.
Personally, I think the problem is not with MCE but the drivers for the hardware - You just need to pick reliable and mature hardware - which is not an easy task!

If I had put the Terratec card in my HTPC before trying it with the Black Gold - I would have sold the box and bought a DVD Recorder from Sony within a week. It can work really well and reliable but one duff bit of hardware and the whole box becomes unusable. Picture Quality is fine through SVideo onto a standard TV but not as good a set-top box. Looks great on an LCD if you manage 1:1 pixel mapping, but sadly the LCD vendors seem to think DVI input from a PC is not very important.

[StephenR]

So it IS possible to have a stable system then. Makes the problems I am having all the more frustrating. I wouldn't mind so much if I had built it myself, but as I say I have actually bought a system so you would think it would work out of the box.

Originally Posted by Spacecat

I built mine october 2004, cost me about £400 all in all

Originally Posted by Spacecat

Its more reliable than any TV recording device i have ever had and the quality is superb.

Full specs please I knew I should have built one myself...

[Spacecat]

specs of my MCE PC homebuilt

MCE 2005
Athlon 2000 XP
512mb ram
some old gigabyte board (can remember the model number) G7 something i think
ATI radeon 9600
Sapphire Theatrix ( ATI 550 pro) TV card
maplins RGB to Svideo convertor

cheap and cheerful and works like a charm

[Matthoulb]

I can't actually remember the last time my MCE box crashed. I've had it over a year now, and since September last year it has been on 24/7 and not crashed. It reboots itself every 3 weeks though for some reason!?

I think it's great :D

[Barryd2005]

My system is hardly impressive, yet it works perfectly for everything. TV, DVD, AVI files, MPEG, Music etc...

Never crashed, never frozen. Take a look at the spec!

Dell GX150 Optiplex
P3 1.0GHZ (Wow!)
512 ram
PVR150MCE TV card
Radeon 9250 graphics card (128mb) using s-video out to a 5 year old tv.
NTL Pace STB into the TV card
DVD recorder
Soundblaser Live card (very old)
40gig Primary drive for music, 120gig secondry for ripped DVD's and recorded TV.

Picture is perfect on the TV, can record and playback live tv with no problems at all, pause, rewind etc.. too, no problems. Rip CD's in under 5 mins, can rip DVD's (using other software) in 20-30 mins.

My only complaint would be that it takes about 2 or 3 seconds for the tv guide to come up when watching live tv, but other than that, i'm shocked that such a low spec pc is doing so well, but it is.

I take delivery soon of a nice Dell 9150, I'm hoping that will speed up menu's etc and faster switching of screens, as 2-3 seconds is totally unacceptable!!

[lisag]

Stephen, I empathise! Personally my Media Center is the best gadget I have ever had It is so versatile, and connected to the plasma and av amp in the lounge it has so many uses.

However - it has been a steep learning curve and the most difficult piece of kit to get working properly, I must have spent hours tweaking and researching - I am on my second machine now and it it presently very reliable.

Antec Aria case
Asus A8N-VM-CSM mobo
Athlon 64 3500+
1GB DDR333 Crucial Ram
Zalman 7000 CPU cooler
2 x large capacity IDE drives
Creative USB2 24bit soundblaster soundcard
Terratec 2400i (and it works!)
Lite-on DVD Rom

Is there any chance that you can get a refund on your current machine - as it obviously isn't working properly, and build yourself one that works?

lisa

[StephenR]

Originally Posted by lisag

Is there any chance that you can get a refund on your current machine - as it obviously isn't working properly, and build yourself one that works?

I am having ANOTHER exchange on Thursday. This will be my third unit from this supplier and my sixth Media Center overal!! It is clear that whilst many people have problems with these things (like me!) it is certainly possible to get that elusive stable system. I will persevere for now, as it's not actually costing me anything - except my sanity

[HiZ]

Mine is working so well after a lot of tinkering.

My picture was rubbish (well ok not unacceptable but crap for somethng costing more than £35 at Asda)

Picture issues are down to the graphics card, what are you using. I spent 150 on a motherboard (AOpen i915GMm-HFS) thinkingit was the bees knees but infact the on-board graphics wern't up to it and I had the same problems as you. Fanless 6600 has turned this stupid heap of bits into a top gadget now!

[rdhir]

I think tinkering is the key, I also think building yourself will help in that I think MCE needs a clean simple build with full control of everything, especially Video Codecs. Personally I found picture quality very good, and I have a true hidef plasma panel (Pioneer 1280x768).

I totally agree though that its still short of being a prime time mass market device.

I also think the inital pricing was insane. I only think it makes sense now you can get configurations where 400-600 buys you a twin tuner PVR with loads of recording time.

I think you'll also find other PVRs have been a work in progress too. I was lucky that TIVO was stable when I bought it, although I've had plenty of problems with the Telewest set top box, so there is no way I'm touching their new PVR for a couple of years. The same was true of Sky+ when first launched, and I think if you look at the threads on PVRs elsewhere you'll see similar issues.

Which Media Center do you have?

Cheers

Rajiv

[StephenR]

The Media Center PC I bought is from Tranquil PC, and apart from the obvious problems I have been having I can't fault the build quality of the machine itself. Also, the people at Tranquil are always very friendly and helpful. If I could just get a working unit ...

I think part of the problem is my high expectations - I used to have a TiVo before I was lured by the promise of an all-singing all-dancing media machine which does everything a TiVo does plus stores all your music, movies ... well, you know the rest. Media Center sounded such a good idea, but I was beginning to think it did all sound too good to be true and the reality was a lot different. I still have faith though (just), so I will see what happens with this replacement before giving up completely!