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Author Topic: How does MC compare with Microsoft's Media Center?  (Read 2129 times)

rormedia

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How does MC compare with Microsoft's Media Center?
« on: November 01, 2008, 02:52:46 am »

What does this give me that Vista Media Center does not offer? Please I am not a troll, just want to find the best soloution for a media PC.
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phalanthus

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Re: In a nutshell
« Reply #1 on: November 01, 2008, 03:16:46 am »

 ?
whats a troll
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JimH

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Re: In a nutshell
« Reply #2 on: November 01, 2008, 07:41:07 am »

Welcome to Interact.  There are lots of threads here where people have asked similar questions.  Reading the forum a little would be a good place to start.

Here's an example: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=48873.0

The "Main Index" on the Wiki (link above) has a lot of subjects you could read about.

I don't think you will find any single thing that makes you want to switch from Microsoft Media Center, but our approach is a lot more open that Microsoft's.  We play more file formats, for example, and work with more devices.

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Listener

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Re: How does MC compare with Microsoft's Media Center?
« Reply #3 on: November 01, 2008, 12:01:49 pm »

What does this give me that Vista Media Center does not offer? Please I am not a troll, just want to find the best soloution for a media PC.

What matters to you?

 audio vs. images vs. video
 audio sound quality?
 support for a wider variety of tags in audio
 flexible user interface
 10' away TV interface or 20" distant PC monitor interface

MC 12 is very feature rich.  Just what is a killer feature depends on your needs.

Bill

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twobadfish

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Re: How does MC compare with Microsoft's Media Center?
« Reply #4 on: November 02, 2008, 02:58:58 am »

MC is a powerhouse. If you have even demoed MC and used WMP this shouldn't be a question - at all.

Better question: What can WMP do that MC can't?
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DadCat

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Re: How does MC compare with Microsoft's Media Center?
« Reply #5 on: November 03, 2008, 10:41:38 am »

The main feature I wanted that Windows MCE (at least the XP version) didn't have was user-definable tags for video, which MC appears to support VERY thoroughly (and consistently across media types).

And MC can export its tags to XML. While that might not seem like a big deal, consider what would (will?) happen down-the-line after you've carefully tailored the tags for hundreds of videos and thousands of stills, and you decide to switch to a different media management software.  How you gonna get the tags OUT of your old media management software? There's no guarantee that the new software can import the XML, but it's better to have your tags in a (text) XML file than the tags being held "hostage" in the old software, with no way to get them out!

(my day job is a computer systems consultant, and so I spend my days dealing with data migration issues)

Of course, I've only downloaded the eval for MC12, but it looks really impressive, and I'll be buying it (MC13) soon...

DadCat     
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