Please provide a list of the perfect Media Center install base. I understand Media Center is at the top of the list but more information is important here. The key is to support as many media files as possible. MPEG1/2/4, MP3, FLAC, DIVX, XVID, H.264, MOV, WMV, etc.
The interesting thing is that I intentionally only allow Media Center to import FLAC, JPG, and DVD folders...that's it. We have a small collection of video clips, mp3s, and RAW images but I like keeping everything nearly perfect with this small collection of files that I can very easily manage and keep clean. Every FLAC CD is hand cleaned up and imported--same for DVDs--and I don't really care too much about our digital camera JPGs but I still clean them up, deleting a very small percentage (the worst of the worst).
But nevertheless, on a typical computer, it's vital to have a support for the most files. One of my biggest questions is about Divx and Mov files. I read that some users don't actually use the Divx installer or the Apple installer but a different package. I know about the Quicktime Alternative and Real Alternative but am not sure if those are important or not.
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It would be great if everyone who wants to participate would provide a list of media-related installs that they add to a FRESHLY formatted computer. Assume the computer has basically nothing more than Windows Media Player. Also, please describe any settings changes. For example, I currently use Cyberlink DVD decoder and I always change the audio to the noisy setting so the audio more closely matches other audio levels. Any good software that doesn't include junk system tray stuff is always appreciated....just a nice list of everything start to finish...go ahead and include the FLAC plugins for completeness even though those are an obvious necessity.
Lastly, I like VLC and Firefox but I often experience problems when trying to preview songs on Amazon and other sites. There usually is some kind of buffering problem that requires the entire clip to download -- and then there is often a long delay before the song preview even starts playing.
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Topic: The Ultimate MEDIA playback setup (Read 1041 times)