Media Center and Vista need a divorce

onlydarksets — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:04:22 +0000

Long Zheng posted a link on his blog to a Microsoft-produced retrospective of the last decade of Media Center versions (also posted by Brent at GeekTonic, which reminded me to write on this). It’s time for Microsoft to uncouple Media Center from the OS.

I jumped ship from Vista Media Center almost 6 months ago, and one of the biggest reasons was a persistent bug with an identified cause resulted in many of my recordings having an incorrect duration, which made it difficult (although not impossible) to use the files. To date, the problem has still not been resolved, because Media Center updates are tied to the OS release schedule, which does not permit quick release patches for non-critical bugs. If they get it wrong, it’s a whole new cycle before they can send out another patch.

Microsoft already realizes that baking everything into the OS is not always the best idea, because it creates a bloated OS and reduces flexibility and limits the options for the individual apps (see here, here, and here). Given the much richer experience I have had with SageTV since August, I think that applies to Media Center, as well.

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Mounting multiple ISOs

onlydarksets — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:33:26 +0000

When installing Office, etc. from our Microsoft Partner MSDN library, I usually take the lazy route and use 7-zip to unpack the ISOs. ISODisk lets you mount up to 20 ISOs simultaneously, and it seems like a more efficient path.

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Windows 7 media formats and transcoding

onlydarksets — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 19:19:22 +0000

Looks like Windows 7 will support DivX and XviD, in addition to H.264 and MP4. It’s about time.

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Onlydarksets » Windows

Media Center and Vista need a divorce

Mounting multiple ISOs

Windows 7 media formats and transcoding