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[jimmy neutron]

I've installed MC on many of my PC's for almost a year already, and they've all required some tweaking and finese to get them up and running perfectly. But last week I ordered some new PC components to build a replacement media only system for my ageing Gameroom system. The Gameroom PC was an old Pentium 4 2.6 gHz with 2 gigs ram and a decent HDMI compatible video card. All my music is stored on an external USB 3.0 2 terrabyte drive. All worked very fine on that PC and I was surprised at how flexible MC is when it comes to PC specs. The ONLY thing I use this Gameroom PC for is to play back my music files (up to 24/192) and DVD/Blu Ray movies. This Gameroom PC also streams those files to other HTPC's around the house. My new build is an AMD quad core Phenom II x 4 975 3.8 gHz cpu, 16 gigs RAM, ASUS mobo with built in ATI HD4250 HDMI video and SPDIF out, 120 gig Intel SSD drive for OS and files only, Windows 7 64bit, and all controlled on a touchscreen monitor. Everything installed the first time, and all tweaking went perfect the first time! No reverts, no BSOD, no tracking down what went wrong - everything just worked right the first time. MC installed, accepted the settings I gave it on the first try, and ran all auto-imports painlessly. Now music playback, as well as all my movies and videos (DVD, Blu Ray, AVI's mpg's, etc) all play smooth-asa-snot, fast, no hiccups, perfect color, and the music is as clear and wonderful as ever. I've never had a media center install and fire up on the first try before. MC 17 works beautifully on Win 7 64 bit, and runs faster than Superman. I just can't believe how fast and super smooth MC is.

Thanks Matt. I just had to commend you guys for building a solid and fllexible, no BS media center!

Jimmy

[JimH]

Nice story.  Thanks for filing it.

[JimH]

jimmy,
You're famous!  I linked to your post in the newsletter.
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?board=23.0

Thanks,

Jim

[jimmy neutron]

*blush* Gosh Jim 

Quick update: My new quad-core AMD Phenom x4 3.6 gHz build is smoothly playing along. No hiccups. Last night I was streaming a blu-ray rip that are housed in exernal drives on my downstairs HTPC (the music library is housed on this Gameroom HTPC) and both MC sync'ed flwlessly the first time. I was nervous about hitting the PLAY button on the new Gameroom build to commence playback of Planet of the Apes BD, which began to stream from the downstairs HTPC to the upstairs HTPC on a hard-wired LAN connection. Remember, I had not done ANY settings in the OPTIONS tab - not even surround sound modes, or video playback modes. This was all out of the box setings. The movie begins to play, the video paints across my 10" screen......beautiful colors, saturation, etc. Then the sound comes in....woohoo! full 5.1 surround sound!!! Isin't that awesome! No tweaking! No syncing issues. Just perfect picture, audio, and blu ray playback the first time. Gotta love MC.

I will say that although I found MC quite playable on a Pentium 4 machine (for music and standard DVD playback/streaming it's just fine), the added horse power makes MC just shine! The interface just rolls and slides, the changes are instantaneous, the "feel" of the whole system is rock solid and stable. MC scales very well for what it's purpose is - almost as if it "auto adjusts" to the specific system it is running on. I don't know if this is deliberate or a fluke, but I have played MC on both extremes of the PC spec hardware - P4 (original) to Intel Dual core (on my music only 2 channel system) to an AMD dual-core (in the downstairs HTPC) to an AMD quad-core (in the upstairs Gameroom HTPC) - and MC plays super nice with all of them. Obviously if the budget allows a faster CPU and max RAM it will open MC's throttle up, but the scaling allows for a very flexible build most anyone will be able to enjoy.

Thanks again for a solid media player. Every use of MC puts a small grim on my face.

Jimmy