Comments on: CyberNotes: Six Amazing Plug-Ins for Vista Media Center

By: Ian Cammarata

Ian Cammarata — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:36:39 +0000

central tx wrote:
I need information on codec Windows Vista Media Center extender cause I can play most movies on Windows Vista Media Center PC but not on the Linksys Media Center extender.
I believe that Media Center Extender only supports a limited number of video formats, and so it’s not likely that you’ll be able to get them to play.

Get one of the installers that's a huge bundle of codecs, and Media Center will play anything. Only issue is that you won't be able to fast forward and rewind, but instead have to skip back or forward several seconds at a time.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 23 May 2008 21:54:32 +0000

central tx wrote:

I need information on codec Windows Vista Media Center extender cause I can play most movies on Windows Vista Media Center PC but not on the Linksys Media Center extender.

I believe that Media Center Extender only supports a limited number of video formats, and so it's not likely that you'll be able to get them to play.

By: central tx

central tx — Fri, 23 May 2008 02:20:49 +0000

I need information on codec Windows Vista Media Center extender cause I can play most movies on Windows Vista Media Center PC but not on the Linksys Media Center extender.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:33:13 +0000

Google wrote:

What video formats does Media Center support?

Windows Media Video, MPEG-1/MPEG-2, and DV-RMS I believe. There are some tricks to get AVI files to play in it though.

By: Google

Google — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:50:56 +0000

What video formats does Media Center support?

By: Schwinn

Schwinn — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 12:15:40 +0000

I won’t argue about Linux being difficult with some hardware – drivers have always been a problem on Linux. However, I will say that with the right hardware (ie Linux capable/compatible) it’s pretty flawless to setup a pre-packaged release (like Mythdora, which is what I am currently running, or Mythbuntu). This makes is easy for first-timers to deal with Linux and get going quickly.

As for Vista MCE being so great, I haven’t seen anything in Vista “run great” unless you have a “super-computer”. As a comparison, my Mythdora box started life as a 700Mhz Duron CPU, with 256MB of RAM. This is where Linux shines… low-end hardware. This setup blew away any Windows-based setup I could create (I did try numerous times). Since then, it’s been “upgraded” with 128MB more of RAM that I had lying around, and an AthlonXP 1800+ CPU… again, nothing amazing, but it works wonderfully.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:15:41 +0000

I’ve run MythTV on a computer before as well, and it didn’t always play nice with my hardware. I ended up having to ditch it and found that the Vista Media Center is exceptionally nice, and using the Xbox 360 as an extender is awesome. So I’m sure MythTV works great for some people, but not all computers will run it as expected.

By: kah00na

kah00na — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:54:40 +0000

MythTV does have a lot of these features if you can get it to work… and work consistently. I ran MythTV on SuSE 10.2 and even did a lot of updating on their installation Wiki but it is such a pain to get running. I also used MythTV on two different Ubuntu boxes. Both times, a simple update that was pushed from Ubuntu killed it beyond my repair. MCE installation is as simple as a windows installation (or purchasing a computer with it already installed). No trickery to get it running or getting your tuners to work. Vista takes care of all that. The worst problem I’ve had on vista is the picture quality, but this is due to the tuners and not the OS. The picture looked the same with MythTV as well. Another nice feature of MythTV is that you now get to pay for your TV listings. They are included free with MCE. Pay for the OS or pay for the listings I guess… your choice.

By: Schwinn

Schwinn — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:29:24 +0000

Funny to see that all these “amazing” plugins are pretty much standard features in Linux-based MythTV distributions like Mythdora…

I particularly love the commercial skipping features in MythTV… so robust and powerful!

[mythtv.org]
[g-ding.tv]
[mythbuntu.org]