WMC is starting to show it's lack of support. Look at the issues some have had with guide data and Display Port..
Also, it can be good to evaluate your future setup BEFORE your current one goes dead...
I agree especially with your last remark, and we've all seen changes just in the information presented on the WMC Guide, as opposed to the update issues. I typically fail for the "NetTV" guide downloads, but I'm not sure how it affects me at the moment: everything else I use through my cable-provider or the integrated OTA Hauppauge card stays up-to-date.
Per the title I put on this post, here are my remarks to date comparing WMC/Win7, KODI/HDHR-Add-on, and HDHR VIEW with HDHR DVR. I also explain my ongoing failure to make the WMC "My-Digital-Life" team's hack work on Windows 10.
So if anyone finds this useful, and you have a little time and lots of knowledge, tell me via PM how I can integrate WMC, HDHR-DVR or even KODI so that my WHS-2011 system is a "server," with access via Win workstation connectivity to the server -- possibly the server feeding my AVR/HDTV. If I can do that, it will save energy for the household.
Here's my "contribution:"
Systems:
I7-2600K Sandy Bridge, 2x 500GB SSDs, 1x 1TB HDD media storage;
I7-2700K S_B_, 1x 500GB SSD, 1x 60GB SSD caching drive, 1x 1TB media and game "Program Files" storage
C2D Penryn Laptop, 1x 500GB SSD on SATA-II controller
OS-es: Win 7 SP1; Win 10 Separate partitions in dual-boot
SSD caching split in separate partitions for Win7 and Win10 ~ 30GB each.
Reference Software: Windows Media Center on Windows 7
Test software:
KODI with HDHomeRun Add-on -- Partial success
HD HomeRun VIEW -- Partial success
Windows Media Center [My Digital Life hack] for Windows 10 -- No success
Issues:
There are always issues about whether some program will properly and reliably display encrypted content
There may be issues with HDCP-compliance on a laptop with pre-HDCP graphics
There are some peculiar issues about the behavior of the SiliconDust Firmware that installs itself on all HD HomeRun Prime tuners once you have subscribed, downloaded and installed the HD HomeRun DVR Beta software. See below.
Observations: If KODI is one of the preferred WMC alternatives, Windows Media Center wins hands down for these features:
1) Ability to choose particular tuners within any HD HomeRun Prime device
2) Relative ease of use from a keyboard as well as remote. KODI menus are cumbersome just to access LiveTV through the HDHR add-in.
3) Reliability of total access to subscription encrypted content, excluding "Pay Per View" and "On Demand" features available through the cable-provider's STB
HDHR VIEW program lies somewhere between WMC (superlative) and KODI ("so-so") in ease of use and handling of inaccessible content
HDHR DVR installs new firmware in all of your HDHR' devices with no ability to limit installation to a single tuner. This is not necessarily a risk or problem, because the new firmware seems to work reliably with Win7-WMC configurations.
The Front-end software -- VIEW and KODI/HDHR -- do not allow -- or do not easily allow if I have yet to discover-- the user's options for changing the default drive/volume and folder for recording and buffering.
Being able to select or disable tuners for a particular Win7 installation is reliable and easy within WMC. But setting an HDHR' to "disabled" through the SiliconDust software installed on a workstation does not prohibit VIEW or KODI HDHR Add-in from accessing a different HDHR' device when you want it to use only one in specific (for testing, also).
To this end, recording will fail, creating large blank MPG video files after the program initiates the recording from the wrong HDHR' -- which had been "disabled" in the HDHR DVR setup for that particular Prime device.
WMC for Windows 10 -- My Digital Life team-hack: Following the instructions to install this on Win 10 leads to a dead end -- for the suspected reason that the Win10 configuration was a "clean install" and not an upgrade or overlay to Win 7 and existing installed software.
I am going to test this some more, to see if I can download the Windows Media Center software for either Win 7 or Win 8.x. But the only explanation of the hack's failure so far, given its promotion at different "Media PC" web-sites, is that WMC may not be simply removed from an upgrade installation because it has to work with a Win7 dual-boot option.
These observations about the MDL hack are merely intuitive, or possibly naive. But the MDL hack received a lot of acclaim, and whatever it does to the Windows 10 OS-installation is apparently benign.
Overall, neither KODI/HDHR-Add-in or HDHR VIEW are as responsive under Windows 10 as is Win7 Media Center. There are problems viewing different encrypted channels in some of various tiers.
On the WI-FI-enabled laptop connecting to my wired network and accessing the HDHR''s, I experience some stuttering and lockups that are more annoying for KODI/HDHR-add-in versus VIEW, but VIEW still has more problems with those symptoms than WMC -- which doesn't miss a lick in the laptop's Win7 and its limited on-board Intel graphics.
SiliconDust has a ways to go with HDHR DVR. They seem to be the type of tech-outfit which knows where it's going with this Beta HDHR DVR software. I just hope that they can get there.