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Author Topic: has anyone run Media center on a Mac with the parallels software??  (Read 2409 times)

nunisimo

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this will be my sole decision on whether i get a mac..
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AndyCircuit

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GrumpyNick

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Re: has anyone run Media center on a Mac with the parallels software??
« Reply #2 on: April 01, 2008, 06:30:36 pm »

I run MC 12 on an iMac in a Vista Bootcamp partition using VMWare Fusion. All my music is on an external 320GB firewire drive which I share to the VM and it seems to co-exist quite happily with iTunes. I use MC for ripping, tagging etc. but I use iTunes for managing my 160G iPod Classic and my wife's iPod Touch (yes, I know MC can do this too, but I like the fact that iTunes automatically syncs my contacts and calendar from the Mac). I was a dyed-in-the-wool Windows user until I got the Mac last Xmas and I must say I haven't looked back. It dual boots Windows beautifully for playing games and I've got it running SqueezeCenter to drive my Roku Soundbridge.

Hope this helps

Nick
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park

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Re: has anyone run Media center on a Mac with the parallels software??
« Reply #3 on: April 01, 2008, 08:13:27 pm »

I have a new mac pro and 10gb ram. I installed a trail version of parallels exclusivley so that i could use mc for my music and photos without rebooting to windows all the time. But it hasn't worked well for me. It installed perfectly with no special effort required from me. It uses my existing bootcamp version of windows, and does everything as it should (connects to the interent fine etc.) but when i load MC and play a song, the song keeps cutting out, like it's buffering or something. Also the MC window frequently seizes up and it's minutes before I can click inside it again. Video doesn't play back at all (MC just freezes again).

However using the standard windows media player, music plays back ok. Videos only playback sound though. No picture.

I have none of these issues when using MC after booting into windows from bootcamp.
My parallels trail ends this week, and though I've scoured their forums, I can't find any useful advice that could fix it for me, so I guess I'm back to using bootcamp again.

For when I absolutely need to hear music on the mac, I have taken to using Songbird. It's ok, but still has a long way to go. It works better than itunes for me.
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leezer3

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Re: has anyone run Media center on a Mac with the parallels software??
« Reply #4 on: April 02, 2008, 07:17:14 am »

Video wise, it because there are no codecs installed on the virtual machine :)
Install the CCCP ( http://cccp-project.net ) using Paralells and they should work. Pausing or seeking is going to be iffy though.

Cheers

-Leezer-
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mhakman

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Re: has anyone run Media center on a Mac with the parallels software??
« Reply #5 on: April 03, 2008, 09:09:42 am »

this will be my sole decision on whether i get a mac..
Do not fear! A Mac is an excellent hardware to run Windows on, independently on whether you also run OS X or not.

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park

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Re: has anyone run Media center on a Mac with the parallels software??
« Reply #6 on: April 03, 2008, 10:14:09 am »

leezer i already had cccp installed in windows before i parallelized it.
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Seviien

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Re: has anyone run Media center on a Mac with the parallels software??
« Reply #7 on: April 03, 2008, 03:07:42 pm »

It works like a champ for music.  Video is a little dodgey, even with a pile of ram, but that's mostly a function of the virtualization.
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park

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Re: has anyone run Media center on a Mac with the parallels software??
« Reply #8 on: April 04, 2008, 05:48:05 pm »

I wonder what was so different with my setup then? Even audio was choppy. Maybe it was to do with being a mac pro. I heard that mac pros and leopard have only recently been supported in parallels. My trail is up now and so i have uninstalled it. Patiently waiting for a mac version of MC or MJ...  ;)
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Seviien

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Re: has anyone run Media center on a Mac with the parallels software??
« Reply #9 on: April 04, 2008, 05:57:55 pm »

1.  try vmware instead of parallels
2.  map your shared folders as a network drive
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john h

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Re: has anyone run Media center on a Mac with the parallels software??
« Reply #10 on: April 06, 2008, 09:41:02 pm »

I run MC on my Macbook using Parallels.  Works fine with music.  After 12 months, however, I'm almost ready to return to a PC laptop just because, even though I first learned on a mac years ago, I've become too dependent on Windows.   :'(

For those who are interested in trying this, beware because Parallels has perhaps the worst customer service for any software I have purchased.  Check out the parallels forum, which seems to try to emulate MC's forum here.  Notice all the angry complaints?  It's like day and night to MC support here.  And, Parallels has some weird bugs; when I installed, it took me about 10 tries to get it to install properly, and all I did was try the same thing over and over again until it worked.

JH
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johnh

Seviien

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Re: has anyone run Media center on a Mac with the parallels software??
« Reply #11 on: April 07, 2008, 11:32:28 am »

again... vm ware >> parallels

:)
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park

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Re: has anyone run Media center on a Mac with the parallels software??
« Reply #12 on: April 15, 2008, 11:26:52 am »

Sorry to resuscitate this thread again. I couldn't tolerate another minute of itunes on my mac pro, so I spent tonight putting vmware on to see if it worked any better than parallels. Just reporting back that everything seems to be working perfectly. Maybe this thread could be moved by someone to the other hardware board...?

In vmware, I'm not getting aero like i did with parallels, but music plays back smoothly from a network share even when moving windows around (unlink parallels). Video plays back in detached view (not a chance of that in parallels) in a medium sized window, but no luck with full screen movie playback. Everything stays responsive about 80% of the time (couple of times MC has freezed but then come back to life).

I can live with booting into windows just to play the odd movie (this is supposed to be my work computer ;), as long as MC is snappy and responsive when it comes to music and photo organization and playback. So I think I might part with some more dosh a buy a license for vmware.
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newsposter

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Re: has anyone run Media center on a Mac with the parallels software??
« Reply #13 on: April 16, 2008, 04:14:37 am »

Don't forget to try out Virtualbox

www.virtualbox.org
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