I cannot be absolutely sure of such a thing, but how would one find such a process? Seems likely that if any such process existed, it would be known after all these years of WMC implementation.
Well you could watch for activity in the
Process Explorer, or even in Windows Task Manager or Resource Monitor. But the activity is likely to be very brief and easy to miss, so that may not be a good solution. To be absolutely sure you would need to have some logging software which monitored which software accessed which hardware, in this case the tuners, in your PC, and maybe record details such as when, for how long, what it did and so on. I don't know of any such software available to regular users.
The process of tuner discovery, and its impact on other programs that use installed TV tuners may be well known, but finding the information may be difficult as it is a very specific issue, not encountered by many because they don't run WMC alongside other TV applications. Basically, your assertion that nothing else is grabbing the HDHR Prime tuners because you have dedicated them to MC, and have a Ceton infiniTV4 dedicated to WMC, is a gross assumption that I would never make, as I could never be sure what software is doing in the background unless I investigate thoroughly, or the developers tell me exactly what is happening. I'm sure the WMC developers haven't confirmed that for you, and as WMC automates so much of its setup, I would not expect it to leave an installed TV tuner untouched. There are many, many threads around the internet of people reporting problems with TV tuners. Some of them may have been caused exactly by this issue.
The only way I know to be sure that WMC is not interfering, is to completely disable WMC for a test period, or as Jim suggested, install MC on a separate PC. If you have no separate PC to install your HDHR Prime tuners and MC into, then I recommend that you do disable start-up of WMC with Windows, then edit the WMC services to disable them, then reboot your PC and test MC. The two WMC services you should disable start-up for are;
1. "Windows Media Center Receiver Service" described as "Windows Media Center Service for TV and FM broadcast reception"
2. "Windows Media Center Scheduler Service" described as "Starts and stops recording of TV programs within Windows Media Center"
Change their "Startup Type" to Disabled, not just to Manual.
You must reboot after making these changes, to be sure no part of WMC is still running. Also be sure that no part of the HDHR programs are running.
In fact, you should research those two services, and you will find that your assertion;
5. Recording apparently requires MC to be running (unlike WMC). That's acceptable, of course, but a recording indicator on the Theater View screen (perhaps by the clock) would be a handy option.
is incorrect. WMC also needs to have at least the second of those two service running in order to make a recording. It probably actually requires both.
MC only requires the JRiver Media Server to be running, and not the user interface. If you go into Tools/Options/Startup/Windows Startup/Run on Windows Startup and select either "Media Server" or "Media Center and Media Server", then TV recordings will be made as scheduled.While I await the results of the above test, I expect that the first two of your assertions;
1. Every hour on the hour, whatever program I'm watching live just stops. Workaround is to tune a different channel, then tune back to the one I wanted. I can handle this problem, but cannot recommend using MC for TV for anyone else while this problem persists. I want to be able to steer others to MC as their WMC replacement...
2. Recordings don't work. They end up being 1 minute long. Workaround is to record via WMC, then move to organized folders for various series that MC is monitoring. That means, of course, that MC cannot replace WMC until I don't require WMC to overcome such a problem.
will disappear.
I think these two issues are caused by interference from WMC. Note that your test may not work first time with WMC disabled. You may need to run TV setup again in MC first. If you hit problems, ask for help.
As for you other issues;
3. I want to be able to record a program, and while it's still recording, start playing it back from the beginning and skip commercials to catch up with "real time" at the end. That was easy in WMC, but not (apparently) possible in MC.
This works perfectly in MC. Use JTV recording format for the best experience in Time Shifting TV, rather than the TS format. Tools/Options/Television/Recording/Format. Use the left and right arrows on your remote control to skip forward and backward. Tools/Option/Video/Advanced/Jump behaviour. To start playback of the recording, select the recording in Theatre View, and MC will start playback at the planned beginning of the program, and not at the beginning of the recording, which would include any padding time at the front. This is a very nice feature of MC. If you try to start playback of a recording by selecting a TV channel that is being recorded, MC will start playback at the current time, instead of the program start time. Note also that if you have Time Shifting turned on, and there is enough time built up in the buffer, when you select a currently showing program to record, MC will create that recording from the beginning of the show, even though it is in the past. This is a very neat feature.
4. I want to be able to access recorded TV programs from Theater View. I saw a post here that suggested that can be made possible, so I'll keep searching for that...
Of course you are able to access recorded TV programs from Theatre View. I believe by default you will find recorded TV Shows under the "Video/TV Shows" menu in Theatre View, but I have modified Theatre View to separate out TV recordings. Use the "Recent" sort to show recent recordings at the top of the list, rather than the prettier "Series" sort. Search the Wiki and Forum.
Get to know MC.
I believe that addresses all of you issues, except this one;
5. Show channels in an Electronic Program Guide (EPG). Difference: In MC, channels lack icons and color coding; in WMC, icons and color coding are valuable enhancements to the EPG.
This is one area where MC could improve, and I'm sure it will at some stage, when the issue bubbles to the top of the priority list. It has been raised several times, and I suspect it is on the list of things to do. Just not yet.