Media Center w/ the latest games

[Harkonen]

Noob question here. I'm selecting the OS for my new rig, and I've read several threads here on MCE. One of them (forget which) implied that there were compatability issues with certain newer games not running properly in MCE. Is this accurate? Is it hardware driver related?

 

[SEAL62505]

I was also kind of wondering the same thing. It looks like nvidia has a mce driver. It also looked like in the past they didn't keep the driver version level set with the regular xp driver all of the tiime. Does this mean that you can't use a regular xp driver for mce???

 

[fuentefan]

I've been using the regular XP driver for some time now...don't notice a difference.....

 

[KutterMax]

Windows MCE 2005 is XP Professional with an app that is Media Center. Really not a lot of difference.

On the Nvidia website, whether you choose Windows XP or MCE edition, they both link to the 81.98 drivers.

 

[spyordie007]

AFAIK the "MCE Specific" drivers from NVIDIA just add in capabilities to Media Center (I remember some app panel, but dont have it in front of me now); if you dont need those capabilites (which you probably dont) than you can run the latest XP drivers.

 

[Matthias99]

AFAIK, WinXP-MCE is literally just WinXP with a 'media center shell' you can use on top of it (I think it may also include a DVD decoder, but I have not heavily researched it). You should be able to use the regular drivers if you have to, and I'm not aware of any programs that have issues with it (but they could be out there somewhere).

 

[rbV5]

I'm running MCE 2005 with a couple of my rigs. I've not noticed any MCE specific game issues in even the latest games I've tried. You don't run games except launching perhaps MAME and MS games like solitare and such from MCE itself. Outside the MCE application, it behaves and looks exactly like XP.

 

[spyordie007]

WinXP-MCE is literally just WinXP with a 'media center shell'

XP MCE is the Windows XP codebase running a featureset very close to the XP Pro feature set with the addition of the media center software. Technically it's not based on either XP Pro or XP Home. Since it is the XP codebase any software designed for "Windows XP" (logo program, etc.) should run under XP MCE; issues that are MCE specific should be very rare.

I think it may also include a DVD decoder

It does not; however many of the video capture cards that you can purchase include one.