Vista Home Premium vs WinXP MCE

[hasu]

My Vista Home Premium upgrade (for OEM WinXP MCE bought couple of months back from newegg) is here. Wondering if I should upgrade this machine to Vista at all.

My ATI HDTV wonder works just fine with Windows XP for HDTV channels. I am also using MediaPortal as the media center software. Since HTPC runs always with media portal interface GUI enhancements are not going to matter. Neither am I concerned about security features in the machine. Is there any other advantage with Vista Home Premium or the new Media Center package? Since the upgrade process is an irreversible process, I do not want to venture into it unless there is some benefit.

 

[jkresh]

vista mce is a big improvement over mce 2005, however since you are using media portal for your htpc stuff I dont know if vista will be enough for you to switch. I guess the biggest advantage I can think of would be vista will allow you to add a blue ray/hd dvd drive fairly easily (assuming you have the right display/graphics card... or are willing to use anydvd or something like that). The xbox 360 hd dvd drive is <200 and it works fine with vista (I believe it can work with xp as well but its a hassle).

 

[hasu]

Originally posted by: jkresh
I guess the biggest advantage I can think of would be vista will allow you to add a blue ray/hd dvd drive fairly easily (assuming you have the right display/graphics card... or are willing to use anydvd or something like that). The xbox 360 hd dvd drive is <200 and it works fine with vista (I believe it can work with xp as well but its a hassle).

That means I will have to upgrade sooner or later. I will certainly go for HD-DVD or blue-ray for sure, that is a huge improvement over DVD. I was only waiting for an affordable combo drive. I did not know that you can use Xbox HD-DVD in a pc. Currently I am using ATI 9600 Pro because HDTV wonder requires a card with DX-9.0. What is the minimum display card requirements for XBOX HD-DVD?

Thanks

 

[DarkTXKnight]

Id really like to know if there is a big difference to go one way or the other aw well. Im assembling an HTPC and cannot decide on MCE2005, Media portal or Vista MCE. Had been seriously thinking of dual booting for a bit.

 

[compwarez]

blu-ray /hd-dvd drive only support for windvd and powerdvd. it doesnot support for vista mce.

 

[hasu]

Originally posted by: DarkTXKnight
Id really like to know if there is a big difference to go one way or the other aw well. Im assembling an HTPC and cannot decide on MCE2005, Media portal or Vista MCE. Had been seriously thinking of dual booting for a bit.

I would say MediaPortal is better than Windows XP Media center. It has more configuration options, e.g., can mount an ISO image from within the media center and start playing movie from it, can play music from FTP server, has a client/server option for watching TV (etc). Try it out -- it is very easy to install and it runs on regular Windows XP or Vista (minimum OS requirement is Windows 2000 I believe).

 

[hasu]

Originally posted by: compwarez
blu-ray /hd-dvd drive only support for windvd and powerdvd. it doesnot support for vista mce.

Blue Ray/HD-DVD should be OS independent, right? I guess it must be similar to other IDE/SATA devices.

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: DarkTXKnight
Id really like to know if there is a big difference to go one way or the other aw well. Im assembling an HTPC and cannot decide on MCE2005, Media portal or Vista MCE. Had been seriously thinking of dual booting for a bit.

I didn't like MediaPortal very much when I tried it. It doesn't work with the DirectShow filters and this was just annoying as I didn't want to have to install more software just to get it to work when Media Center could already play the files ( but note that MC broke on that PC after trying to thumbnail incomplete videos 😛 ).