Windows Media Centre for Windows 8 Pro

BillW50 wrote:
On 2/25/2014 10:34 AM, Martin ©¿©¬ wrote:
On Sat, 22 Feb 2014 16:02:49 +0000, Martin ©¿©¬
wrote:

Hi,
Where is Windows Media Centre in Windows 8 Pro ?

Thank you for your replies
I use WMC to watch & record tv
Anyone know of a good alternative?
Thank you in advance

I think it depends on your TV tuner. I have four and three of them are
AverMedia TV tuners. And they have their own software (although they do
work with the Media Center too with a driver) and I usually prefer using
AverMedia software instead.


Good third party Media Center replacements cost money.

Some of the freebies, only work with certain card types,
and not everything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...tware_packages

And ugh. Google buys SageTV product and crushes it. Wonderful.
One less good alternative.

I get the impression that TV is past its prime, and
"why are you people still watching TV, you should
be suffering low Netflix download rates instead :-)"
I guess the idea is, multimedia should only irritate
the user, and not be fun to use. Looks like the
evil people, are winning...

Paul

On Tue, 25 Feb 2014 13:42:54 -0500, Paul wrote:

BillW50 wrote:
On 2/25/2014 10:34 AM, Martin ©¿©¬ wrote:
On Sat, 22 Feb 2014 16:02:49 +0000, Martin ©¿©¬
wrote:

Hi,
Where is Windows Media Centre in Windows 8 Pro ?

Thank you for your replies
I use WMC to watch & record tv
Anyone know of a good alternative?
Thank you in advance

I think it depends on your TV tuner. I have four and three of them are
AverMedia TV tuners. And they have their own software (although they do
work with the Media Center too with a driver) and I usually prefer using
AverMedia software instead.


Good third party Media Center replacements cost money.

Some of the freebies, only work with certain card types,
and not everything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...tware_packages

And ugh. Google buys SageTV product and crushes it. Wonderful.
One less good alternative.

I get the impression that TV is past its prime, and
"why are you people still watching TV, you should
be suffering low Netflix download rates instead :-)"
I guess the idea is, multimedia should only irritate
the user, and not be fun to use. Looks like the
evil people, are winning...

There's some truth to what you say. I recently moved and was facing the
question of Internet and TV service. Internet was a no-brainer, but we
decided to forego pay TV and simply put up an antenna to get almost 50 local
(OTA) channels. That takes care of local and national news, weather, sports
(to an extent), and network programming if we decide to watch it. We use a
Roku 3 to watch most things.

On 2/25/2014 12:42 PM, Paul wrote:
BillW50 wrote:
On 2/25/2014 10:34 AM, Martin ©¿©¬ wrote:
On Sat, 22 Feb 2014 16:02:49 +0000, Martin ©¿©¬
wrote:

Hi,
Where is Windows Media Centre in Windows 8 Pro ?

Thank you for your replies
I use WMC to watch & record tv
Anyone know of a good alternative?
Thank you in advance

I think it depends on your TV tuner. I have four and three of them are
AverMedia TV tuners. And they have their own software (although they
do work with the Media Center too with a driver) and I usually prefer
using AverMedia software instead.

Good third party Media Center replacements cost money.

Lots of good things cost money or at least an arm and a leg. ;-)

Some of the freebies, only work with certain card types,
and not everything.

Ah so true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...tware_packages

And ugh. Google buys SageTV product and crushes it. Wonderful.
One less good alternative.

Yes, so sad. :-(

I get the impression that TV is past its prime, and
"why are you people still watching TV, you should
be suffering low Netflix download rates instead :-)"
I guess the idea is, multimedia should only irritate
the user, and not be fun to use. Looks like the
evil people, are winning...

Yes, 78's, wire recorders, 33's, 45's, 8-tracks, real-to-real, beta,
vhs, TV and CD's seems to be next. :-(

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v24.3.0
Centrino Core2 Duo T5600 1.83GHz - 4GB - Windows XP SP2

BillW50 wrote:
On 2/25/2014 5:53 AM, "...winston‫" wrote:
There's more pieces to that puzzle than perceived.

OEM's didn't want to continue to have the cost past on to them for every
Windows sold when it was clear a small percentage of people used it or
even requested support of the OEM who was responsible for supporting OEM
versions of Windows.

Microsoft telemetry agreed with that data.

By not including a low volume usage application, MSFT and OEM's thereby
reduced each of their costs.

Since the majority of OEM machines are the core operating system rather
than the higher. From the business/enterprise perspective - business
didn't want to pay for a feature that wasn't necessary or could
negatively impact productivity.

Knowing the above, it becomes a lot clearer why only Win8 Pro is
capable...and if a low volume application is needed....incumbent on the
user to pay for it or upgrade to it.

The upgrade from the Core to the Pro version has another
liability/support reducing feature for the OEM.
- upgrading from any OEM Core to Pro/with Media Center or OEM Pro to
Pro/withMedia Center changes the license from an OEM to a
retail...thereby ensuring the OEM doesn't have to provide support for
the now retail o/s.

It's all about money...and increasing margin....with the OEM the largest
benefactor...sell the machine with less features at comparable pricing
than previous units with an earlier o/s and reduce support overhead
reducing expense, labor, and warranty accrual costs.


Of course, like anything else...it always pays to research and
investigate and/or read the fine print before spending $$.

That makes sense from the OEM perspective, but what about from the
retail angle?


Variation reduction and commonality. With only two Win8's in the retail
market (Core and Pro) yet common to pre-built OEM pcs it would seem more
costly (development, release, update, support) and illogical to create
two other offsprings (Core with Media Center and Pro with Media Center)
retail o/s packages.
- thus same approach if MC is needed - Upgrade Core to Pro with
Media Center or upgrade Pro to Pro with Media Center.

Retail is a much smaller market than worldwide 6-continent OEM market
where the quantity of licenses to distribute/sell are governed by
contract and accordingly less predictable and controllable.

It is what it is....if needed the option to add it is available (as well
as other 3rd party Media Center-like applications free or fee
based)...the alternative is to spread the cost across the entire
population when only a subset of that same population need it.
--
....winston
msft mvp consumer apps

On Tue, 25 Feb 2014 16:34:26 +0000, Martin ©¿©¬
wrote:

On Sat, 22 Feb 2014 16:02:49 +0000, Martin ©¿©¬
wrote:

Hi,
Where is Windows Media Centre in Windows 8 Pro ?

Thank you for your replies
I use WMC to watch & record tv
Anyone know of a good alternative?
Thank you in advance

Thank you for the replies
My current tuner card (TBS PCI-E DVB-T2 Dual TV Tuner Card) software
is not win8 compatable

Martin ©¿©¬ wrote:
On Tue, 25 Feb 2014 16:34:26 +0000, Martin ©¿©¬
wrote:

On Sat, 22 Feb 2014 16:02:49 +0000, Martin ©¿©¬
wrote:

Hi,
Where is Windows Media Centre in Windows 8 Pro ?
Thank you for your replies
I use WMC to watch & record tv
Anyone know of a good alternative?
Thank you in advance

Thank you for the replies
My current tuner card (TBS PCI-E DVB-T2 Dual TV Tuner Card) software
is not win8 compatable

What tests have you done to verify this ?

What is the exact model number of the card ?
More than one TBS branded card does T2.

Have you tried a Windows 7 driver in Windows 8 ?

Have you made note of the chipset used on the card,
and looked for a DVB product using the same chips ?
Whether this will work, depends on luck. The reason
being, a chipset consists of a "core part", plus the
tuner is "optional and variable". The driver may not
know about all of the hardware on the card, and just
part of it. If the chipset maker (not the video card
maker) does hardware configurations for every one
of its customers, it's possible some other card
maker Windows 8 package, will run on the Windows 7 card.

In some cases, even using the driver update feature in
Device Manager, may be enough to locate a driver.

*******

Your point may also be, that the viewer application
that comes with the TBS product, claims to not run,
or it fouls up. Try right-clicking the executable,
and use the Compatibility tab to select Compatibility
with an older OS.

Just a guess,
Paul