Windows XP Media Center Edition - worth the extra?

[Tripps]

Having evaluated a copy a while back, I don't see any major benefit unless you've got a media PC parked under your TV along with your hifi gear - if it's going to stay as an office PC, then it's not going to be worth the extra outlay I'd say.

[ultimasimon]

I would tend to disagree. If you use it as it is intended with the Windows Media Centre remote control, and plentiful use of the 'green button', then it comes into its own. Its large menus can be read from across a room either on a TFT or a TV and make it simplistic to view - something you couldn't do with a normal PC, you wouldn't be able to even read the normal windows menu's from there. Also when used with the twin-view Media Center TV (Hauppage) cards, you can watch TV live and record another channel at the same time.. thats quite cool The downloaded TV schedule is good and mostly accurate too, and you also have a choice of 'Dancers' while it plays your choonz Weird indeed. I have one in the front room now which replaced the PC which was used as a media center. It is much better than plain Jane XP, all IMO.

The trick is to building it into a sensible case, because Media Centre PC's were orginaly OEM supplier only. This came about because the very nature of these PC's demand high end performance parts capable of the high bandwidth and stresses that this operating system places on the hardware. To decode/encode video and to rip mp3, or record video straight to the hard-drive requires proper performance parts. Once you put these in a media centre box (*read small) you have the start for overheating leading onto thermal runaway. There are now some sensible cases which have been designed from the ground up for Media Center use, but most people think that they can shove any old components into a box, and with this OS this is not the case.

I suppose it depends what you want out of it