Win XP Media Centre - Worth upgrading to, from XP home?

[johnson293]

I currently have Windows XP home edition, but have just bought and installed a Freeview Digital TV tuner/Video capture card (thread on bargain forum).

Was wondering if there was any merit in upgrading/changing from XP home to XP media centre edition, to take advantage of this new hardware?

Anyone use MCE ,and give an idea what the mian differences are between that and normal XP?

Is it worth the change, or should I just stick with XP HE

Cheers

MJ :thumbs:

[Faythur]

Just stick with XP IMO. If you want the 'MCE' experience then there is a more than capable [and very similar] free substitute called http://mediaportal.sourceforge.net/

Launched from the desktop via a program icon [much in the same way as MCE]

Not sure whether you can get a remote to interact with it, but I find the one supplied with the Compro more than does the job for me :thumbs:

[LouBarlow]

MCE is more trouble than it's worth IMHO.

It had problems working with Theatertek for me, when I tried it, so I quickly ditched it and returned to XP.

[Dean[SAS]]

To be honest, you're best running MCE on a seperate system, as you'll end up using alot more then you expect now. MCE will run on a 1GHz CPU, so just get a cheap base unit.

[rwniel]

The only real advantage I've found with Media Center Edition is the support for dual freeview cards, so that you can record two programmes at once (or watch one as you record another). Other than that, I probably would have stuck with XP as there are ways to do most other things such as the EPG side and so forth.

Robert