Which OS for my multimedia box - 98, Me, or 2000?

[Fun Guy]

I am building a MicroATX box to run off my home office LAN that will be responsible for multimedia duties, one of which will be playing DVD's and perhaps even outputting them to the Television. I will have an ATI Rage Fury Pro (with composite and S-Video input/output jacks) as the video card. Although I will be doing the majority of video editing with my NT box, NT does not perform DVD playback, hence my need for an 'other than NT' machine.

Any suggestions as to the best OS to use?

 

[bigshooter]

Use 98se or ME. They are better for multimedia and gaming if you feel like it.

 

[Sunner]

If you're talking about stuff like recording and working with video and sound, go Win2K, since that sort of stuff uses loads of memory, and 9x's mem handling is an utterly pathetic joke.

 

[hans007]

win 2k definitely. My computer is a microatx box, and it would have died video captureing 2 gigs of video like i did today. Actually i'd recommend win2k for any system. win98 and me just straight suck. Me sucks the most i'd say, its total garbage, i cant even see anything different over 98 in Me and it takes up more ram and disk space.

 

[owensdj]

Fun Guy, as you may know, Windows 2000 is actually NT version 5.0, so if you like your NT 4.0 box now, you'll love Windows 2000.

Win 95/98/ME are all just too unstable for professional use. Windows 2000 Professional will give you the stability and memory management you need for your multimedia work, plus it adds the DVD support that NT 4.0 lacks.

 

[Noriaki]

Well Win2000 is NT5, and it should pick up most of the features NT4 lacks that you want (Win2k Server has it's problems, but the Pro/WorkStation version is pretty cool).

If you want to play games, use Win98SE (Not ME, it doesn't do anything Win98SE won't, and it takes away some system level control and of course uses more RAM), but I didn't see you say you wanted games on there so I'm going to say Win2000 Pro.

 

[MuffD]

if youre interested in multimedia, i would definitely go with win me. i have been using all 3 operating systems at home now on 3 different pc's and win me is definitely the one. it has more features than 98 with the video thing and also the new media player. win2k is more for the power user and you will not get much multimedia support when using it

 

[CQuinn]

The question for you guys is, does Win2K have the driver
support that Fun Guy needs to do what he wants with the
Rage Fury Pro? AKAIK, ATI has not yet come out with full
support under W2000 that they have under Win98 and WinME.

If I am wrong on that, or if there is a workaround to get
that functionality under Win2K I'd really like to know.

Right now, ATI's attitude seems to be that Win98 and WinME
are the primary operating systems for multimedia. And I
really can't wholeheartedly reccomend Windows 2000 for this
use, until I am convinced that the company is taking it more
seriously as a multimedia OS.

 

[AMB]

If you have good enough driver support, defintly Win 2K

 

[owensdj]

CQuinn, that's a good question. When I recommended that Fun Guy use Win2K, I was assuming he had already checked to make sure all of his hardware was supported. I looked at ATI's website and it looks like the Rage Fury Pro has Windows 2000 drivers available for download. I saw something about the TV Out wasn't supported yet, but I could be wrong. DVD is definately supported for this card on Win2K.

 

[Fun Guy]

OK, I looked at ATI's web site in depth and it looks good with the ATI Rage Fury Pro card and Win2K.

The question I have is, what is wrong with Win2K Server? This is the OS I have, but Noriaki says that it "has its problems." What does this mean? Do I need to get Win2K WS?

 

[Noriaki]

<< The question I have is, what is wrong with Win2K Server? This is the OS I have, but Noriaki says that it &quot;has its problems.&quot; What does this mean? Do I need to get Win2K WS? >>



Heheh nah, your probably fine.
I work at a big corporation, and we were recently looking at upgrading all our NT4 servers to Win2k servers and there were a bunch of issues. For you it'll be fine. If it runs and does what you want it's fine.

We have over a hundred NT4 servers. For what we do, a single NT4 machine can be a server. It would take 4 or 5 Win2k boxes to make a single server. So that makes a lot of boxes.

In theory, we should be able to combine multiple NT4 servers into a single &quot;set&quot; of Win2K boxes, but who knows how that will work...we were afraid we'd end up needing about 500 Win2k boxes.

But all this is enterprise/corporate level stuff. For you you'll be fine. Don't mind my cynicism. As long as you have drivers for all your stuff, you'll be kicking in Win2k server or otherwise.