Media Center Changes from CEDIA

[JustinGN]

Microsoft held a Windows Media Center conference at CEDIA this year, and while it was short and sweet, a number of major changes have been announced or discovered with regards to Windows 7's implementation of Media Center. Note that the list below covers the changes in Windows 7 only, and these changes may or may not be retroactive with the versions of MCE in Vista or XP.

• CableCARD Tuners are no longer OEM-only, and can be installed by anyone on any hardware
• DRM on CableCARD recordings has been loosened and no longer applies to every show recorded off the tuners, only flagged shows from content providers now.
• SDV support has been added! Great news for Comcast/TWC customers in the states.
• Videos from the new Zune Marketplace (including HD videos) work on Media Servers AND Extenders. New library of content to explore.
• The Dish Network Tuner was on the show floor! Channel Changing was slow, but it appears there's hope yet for Satellite Junkies.
• AP 2.0 allows system integrators to bypass the inherent limit of 5 Extenders. Not for the DIY crowd, unfortunately.
• Tuner limit has been changed from Four tuners in VU TVP to four tuners per type in Windows 7 Media Center. In theory, this means you could have 4 CableCARD Tuners, 4 ATSC/NTSC tuners, and another 4 Hauppage HD-PVRs hacked into it (No official support was announced for those boxes, alas).

So what do you guys think? With the removal of the OEM limitation of CableCARDS, I think the platform has a good chance of taking off again as a competitor to TiVO in the DIY crowd, especially with a new company (Ceton) making the CableCARD, SDV, and M-Stream Tuners at supposedly cheaper prices. If they can keep the cost at about $100 per tuner, I may just jump aboard.

[Hdale85]

Only thing I care about right now is native Blu-ray playback and so far that hasn't been solved

[JustinGN]

I think Microsoft isn't going to throw their weight behind it anytime soon; licensing is expensive, and the other players have native playback in MCE already worked out (ArcSoft TotalMedia Theater being the big one right now). I say just buckle down and grab a fully featured software player that integrates, rather than count on Microsoft to add playback.

Or do what I do, and put it into an MKV container for handy streaming and playback. Works for me!

[Andrew M Ward]

Can we talk...

Are we not allowed to discuss ripping DVD's to our personal PC's..? 8O
You can rip to Windows Media Center... and ripping to your own computer for personal use is perfectly legal (as I understand it)

My record speed is the DVD horror classic "C.H.U.D." which took right at 4:30 seconds to rip... I have no idea why older DVD's rip so fast... The John Carpenter classic "They live" took about 5 minutes

The average newer DVD movie takes about 20 minutes
The new Batman took almost 30 minutes (Yawn..)

I basically have everything going through Media center these days...
it works great - I've experienced no problems with it

[JustinGN]

Can't speak for the forum, but I usually try to avoid discussing about such topics at length due to differing copyright laws in various countries. What may be legal in parts of the EU may not be legal under the US DMCA law, and vice versa.

Besides, a quick google search reveals plenty of forums and how-to's discussing that very topic. We try to be more hardware/HT oriented here from what I can tell.