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[jmschnur]

I am about to go forward with a new HTPC. Primary focus will be audio via JR MC 19. I also will be using JR remote on a new ipad with ios 7.

With this in mind, which  is the better windows OS for the HTPC 8.1 or 7?

[jmone]

Either at the moment.  FYI - I've moved to Win8 on most PC's now and it is fine.

[glynor]

It doesn't matter when it comes to your stated primary use.  Either will work fine.

However, I quite like Windows 8 on my HTPC.  It is, by no means, perfect, and I do NOT like it on my desktop PCs (though I might finally jump with 8.1, we'll see after I play with it a bit on my HTPC), but on the HTPC some of the Metro apps are actually pretty nice.  I wish more of them supported better keyboard-only navigation (with consistent behavior), but the tablet-focused design actually works pretty well from the couch too.  The Weather app and the News app both get used a fair bit here.

Assign a button on your remote to the start key, and with up/down/left/right/enter/esc/backspace you can navigate through quite a bit of Metro without a mouse (though often you have to "intuit" what is selected, since there aren't consistent selection highlights, and those keys don't always work, and sometimes you'll get "stuck" and need to grab a mouse to hit an X or something).

[jmschnur]

Thanks. After I begin to setup, I am sure I will have lots of questions.

Joel

[glynor]

Another thing I like is that the Windows 8 Start screen, unlike the Windows 7 Start Menu, is quite easily navigable from the couch with a remote only.  It makes switching between applications much easier too (it would be even easier if it didn't treat all Desktop apps as a single app, which is annoying, but oh well).

It is frustrating because just as Microsoft essentially "gave up" on the idea of a Couch PC, they built something that is so-close-I-can-taste-it to perfect for a HTPC interface.  So close.  If they just put a little effort into standardizing keyboard input and focusing on using "natural" navigational keys, they could have something great (with very little actual design change).  And, I imagine, it would help for accessibility reasons too.

But, what we have is, like so many things with Windows 8.  Close-to-good, but half-assed in some ridiculous (and in some cases almost deal-breaking) ways.

[jmschnur]

Is there an iphone app for windows 8?