crmstud:

For me, it will be completely useless. DTV support is the one thing I've been waiting forever for. If I actually have to wait till Windows 7 then I'm ditching Vista Media Center for SageTV.

I'm curious, iv DTV support is all you have been waiting for, then what are you gaining from switching to SageTV?  Unless it's mainly for DVD streaming then fine, but else for me the lack of ability to get true cable company HD into my PC, keeps me from using anything but VMC and my Cable Card PC.

 

-D

dravor:

crmstud:

For me, it will be completely useless. DTV support is the one thing I've been waiting forever for. If I actually have to wait till Windows 7 then I'm ditching Vista Media Center for SageTV.

I'm curious, iv DTV support is all you have been waiting for, then what are you gaining from switching to SageTV?  Unless it's mainly for DVD streaming then fine, but else for me the lack of ability to get true cable company HD into my PC, keeps me from using anything but VMC and my Cable Card PC.

 

-D

SageTV supports the Hauppauge HDDVR (a h.264 encoder) which works well with DirecTV.  Also, SageTV supports the R5000-HD, which many of us have used for a couple years to record SD and HD from the cable company in pure digital format like cablecard, but without the stupid restrictions that MSFT gelded the VMC cablecard support with.  We can burn cable HD (and SD) programs to DVD, scan and skip commercials, move them to laptops for playback on airplanes, watch them on extenders (that also happen to play ripped DVD's just fine), and placeshift them with automatic transcoding on the fly over a broadband connection.  None of that works with VMC's cablecard support, which is SageTV is a better platform than VMC for Cable.

Let's face it, MSFT is not building VMC for "our" market.  What more proof than this new news do you need?  Stop waiting for MSFT to never deliver and move on to proven solutions that others have been enjoying while you have been waiting for "Fiji".

Hey, but it's great that you can now enjoy thumbnails in 16x9 format and that the channel mapping for tuners has gotten somewhat better (though still behind what SageTV and others do)...

mikesm:

Also, SageTV supports the R5000-HD, which many of us have used for a couple years to record SD and HD from the cable company in pure digital format like cablecard, but without the stupid restrictions that MSFT gelded the VMC cablecard support with.

The R5000-HD supports Media Center as well: http://www.nextcomwireless.com/R5000/home.htm

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.:: Vista Ultimate x64 :: Antec Fusion :: Corsair HX520w :: ASUS P5E-VM :: Core2 Duo E8400 3.0Ghz :: 4GB RAM :: 128GB SSD System\Apps :: 1TB\5TB Data :: LG GGC-H20L BD/HD DVD :: HDHomeRun x2 ::.

dravor:

crmstud:

For me, it will be completely useless. DTV support is the one thing I've been waiting forever for. If I actually have to wait till Windows 7 then I'm ditching Vista Media Center for SageTV.

I'm curious, iv DTV support is all you have been waiting for, then what are you gaining from switching to SageTV?  Unless it's mainly for DVD streaming then fine, but else for me the lack of ability to get true cable company HD into my PC, keeps me from using anything but VMC and my Cable Card PC.

 

-D

 

Sage supports the new HD PVR as Mike stated, god knows how long it will be before VMC supports any real HD input that DTV users can actually use. I've been holding out for native DTV support since it's initial announcement YEARS ago and now I'm hearing that it will be several more YEARS before it's released. Sorry, but I can't wait that long. It's time to embrace HD not delay it.

mikinho:

The R5000-HD supports Media Center as well: http://www.nextcomwireless.com/R5000/home.htm

Not exactly. Have you tried it? Saying it is in beta is the understatement of the year.......it is a disaster.

Honestly, I’d like to see support for the Hauppauge HD PVR but I wouldn’t bet the farm that Microsoft will support it. The reasoning is simple, much like DVD streaming, its possible and likely even easy to implement but it wouldn’t strengthen their (Microsoft’s) relationship with the owners of said intellectual property. Products like the Hauppauge HD PVR are not approved of products with an end-to-end protected path and therefore are extremely undesirable from the increasingly paranoid prospective of those with a vested interest.

Although Microsoft as a company practically lives in court (Bill’s father was a lawyer was he not!?!) and its an accepted part of doing business I don’t think its fear of a legal battle but rather wanting a congenial working environment with those providing the media. Microsoft will favor their needs and desires over the users of the products IMO and has proven this by deeds many times over.

However, if the Hauppauge HD PVR is supported in Fiji you can bet that its functionality will be truncated with the application of DRM.

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Q6600 | Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R | Corsair XMS2 DDR2 2x1GB + OCZ DDR2 2x512MB | eVGA 8800GT | 2x 650GB HDD | LG GGW-H20L | 2x AVerTV Combo PCIe | Coolermaster 650 Extreme SLI PSU | XBox 360 | XBox 360 HD DVD Drive | Vista Home Premium | WHS | Hauppauge HD PVR

Octavean:

Honestly, I’d like to see support for the Hauppauge HD PVR but I wouldn’t bet the farm that Microsoft will support it. The reasoning is simple, much like DVD streaming, its possible and likely even easy to implement but it wouldn’t strengthen their (Microsoft’s) relationship with the owners of said intellectual property. Products like the Hauppauge HD PVR are not approved of products with an end-to-end protected path and therefore are extremely undesirable from the increasingly paranoid prospective of those with a vested interest.

Although Microsoft as a company practically lives in court (Bill’s father was a lawyer was he not!?!) and its an accepted part of doing business I don’t think its fear of a legal battle but rather wanting a congenial working environment with those providing the media. Microsoft will favor their needs and desires over the users of the products IMO and has proven this by deeds many times over.

However, if the Hauppauge HD PVR is supported in Fiji you can bet that its functionality will be truncated with the application of DRM.

No h.264, no HDDVR.  no h.264 in fiji, no HDDVR in Fiji.  No DRM needed.

 

I can't understand the argument about protecting the content holders when Tivo which has fullcablecard certification just like VMC, lets you export programs with no DRM on them.  This whole issue of REQUIRING DRM is nonsense.  MSFT just advocated doing that as a way of selling THEIR OWN DRM system to try and lock folks into windows based products.  Tivo didn't have a DRM product to sell, so they chose not to require one.  It's not that complicated.

Tivo thinks they actually have to build better products that do what you want in order for you to buy them.  MSFT clearly doesn't take that view with VMC, or Vista for that matter. 

I can't understand the argument about protecting the content holders when Tivo which has fullcablecard certification just like VMC, lets you export programs with no DRM on them.  This whole issue of REQUIRING DRM is nonsense.  MSFT just advocated doing that as a way of selling THEIR OWN DRM system to try and lock folks into windows based products.  Tivo didn't have a DRM product to sell, so they chose not to require one.  It's not that complicated.

Tivo thinks they actually have to build better products that do what you want in order for you to buy them.  MSFT clearly doesn't take that view with VMC, or Vista for that matter. 

Where did you get that idea? Tivo does respect copy protection, here's an example of people not being able to export shows:
http://www.tivoblog.com/archives/2008/02/17/tivotogo-copy-protection/

I'm still waiting for the "leak" that tells me whether Fiji finally adds real ATSC guide support.  The current lack of this is a total joke.

It won't be long before ATSC is the only OTA we have in the U.S.  Does Media Center drop its claim of "officially" supporting OTA programming if there's no guide data by next year?

3rob3:

I can't understand the argument about protecting the content holders when Tivo which has fullcablecard certification just like VMC, lets you export programs with no DRM on them.  This whole issue of REQUIRING DRM is nonsense.  MSFT just advocated doing that as a way of selling THEIR OWN DRM system to try and lock folks into windows based products.  Tivo didn't have a DRM product to sell, so they chose not to require one.  It's not that complicated.

Tivo thinks they actually have to build better products that do what you want in order for you to buy them.  MSFT clearly doesn't take that view with VMC, or Vista for that matter. 

Where did you get that idea? Tivo does respect copy protection, here's an example of people not being able to export shows:
http://www.tivoblog.com/archives/2008/02/17/tivotogo-copy-protection/

Very few shows have the CCI set.   VERY few.  But the geniuses at MSFT won't let you export or do anything else with cbalecard recordings, even if the CCI is not set...  Why is that?

mikesm:

dravor:

crmstud:

For me, it will be completely useless. DTV support is the one thing I've been waiting forever for. If I actually have to wait till Windows 7 then I'm ditching Vista Media Center for SageTV.

I'm curious, iv DTV support is all you have been waiting for, then what are you gaining from switching to SageTV?  Unless it's mainly for DVD streaming then fine, but else for me the lack of ability to get true cable company HD into my PC, keeps me from using anything but VMC and my Cable Card PC.

 

-D

SageTV supports the Hauppauge HDDVR (a h.264 encoder) which works well with DirecTV.  Also, SageTV supports the R5000-HD, which many of us have used for a couple years to record SD and HD from the cable company in pure digital format like cablecard, but without the stupid restrictions that MSFT gelded the VMC cablecard support with.  We can burn cable HD (and SD) programs to DVD, scan and skip commercials, move them to laptops for playback on airplanes, watch them on extenders (that also happen to play ripped DVD's just fine), and placeshift them with automatic transcoding on the fly over a broadband connection.  None of that works with VMC's cablecard support, which is SageTV is a better platform than VMC for Cable.

Let's face it, MSFT is not building VMC for "our" market.  What more proof than this new news do you need?  Stop waiting for MSFT to never deliver and move on to proven solutions that others have been enjoying while you have been waiting for "Fiji".

Hey, but it's great that you can now enjoy thumbnails in 16x9 format and that the channel mapping for tuners has gotten somewhat better (though still behind what SageTV and others do)...

for the most part i agree with you (esp the extenders being able to play everything and proper commercial removal) but the one aspect that has and still keeps me away from sage is their ui.  its flat out bad when compared to vista.  and even with the themes it cant come anywhere close to replicating the vista look and feel.  and the biggest thing i hate about sage and the one thing the themes have yet to do properly is the horizontal navigation.  ive really come to prefer vista's horizontal navigation to mce05's navigation and when i use sage it feels like going back in time to the mce05 days and after vista im not going back.  really hoping the next major version of sage will bring us some of the updates in vmc because is is better in almost every other respect compared to vista media center.  it would also be dependent on mcontrol bringing out a ui for sage as well because going forward that will be important to me.  so vmc has some time with me but its quickly running out.

sage would also benefit from the twist navigation (it does have the beginning of this), overlays and all the other little things vmc does.

and i also find it really funny and speaks to ms not thinking when bringing out these products that sagetv works perfectly with home server and wmc does not.

I’m not sure what your on about exactly but I suspect you have answered your question.

When I think of DRM I primarily think about Microsoft and secondarily think about Apple. Why wouldn’t Microsoft Showcase their DRM scheme in their own software? The demand for DRM is created by the owners of such intellectual property that presumably needs protection but the realization comes from software companies.

In any case I wouldn’t argue either way. I’m not saying Microsoft should use DRM only that they obviously do use DRM and will continue to do so.

They might not support the HD PVR but H.264 support is very likely IMO and that’s a large step in and of itself with respect to HD PVR support. Now if Microsoft doesn’t support the Hauppauge HD PVR in Fiji there may still be enough of an infrastructure change to allow a hack such as QAM support via channel mapping in current versions of Media Center.

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Q6600 | Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R | Corsair XMS2 DDR2 2x1GB + OCZ DDR2 2x512MB | eVGA 8800GT | 2x 650GB HDD | LG GGW-H20L | 2x AVerTV Combo PCIe | Coolermaster 650 Extreme SLI PSU | XBox 360 | XBox 360 HD DVD Drive | Vista Home Premium | WHS | Hauppauge HD PVR

Seems like a leak has happened somewhere on Fiji...

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=834609

I haven't tried this as from reading the comments it expires next month and I want a stable system.  However, the key feature that people seem to be using is DVB-S with HD support.   BBC HD was working from within Media Center.  Seems that there are lots of bugs and pieces to be improved but from the screenshots that people have posted I am eager now for the final release when I will finally be able to make good use of my 4 DVB-T and 2 DVB-S tuner setup!

 

From the leaks we have been hearing about Fiji, it appears that this beta is all about HD. Other than than the "favorite channels" feature, it doesn't sound like Media Center will add more features other than being able to play HD. I had hoped that they would have added features like overlays while you are watching TV: i.e. weather, RSS feeds, stock ticker, etc. I had hoped they would have added an ability to view such sites like Hulu and YouTube. At the very least, I was hoping that they would have broken the category"Photos and Videos" into 2 separate categories, or allowed you to manage different libraries for each of the categories: i.e. The Photos category doesn't look for photos under any of your music folders.

Since I don't yet use HD, I'm expecting to be underwelmed with this update.

Are beta invitations still available, or, is there a waiting list for users to sign up to?

The link in this thread's first post is no longer valid.