Windows Media Center is the reason I bought Vista on release day.  Worth every penny.  It's so much better than any other DVR I've ever used, plus it syncs well with my media players (a Zune 80 and an old portable media center).

lol, I have business edition and does not comes with media center... so I use Pinnacle media studio and it sucks!

Love Media center but wish it had an option to edit the files in Media Center the way I can on my DVR. For example, give you the option to cut out the padding at the start and end of a show.

JMTC

Molly

One of the best features in Vista and the most underestimated one.

Good post, I love Media Center.

I should just point out:

The Internet TV service appears to be US-only (or at the very least, it doesn't work everywhere).

"You can watch, pause, and rewind live TV shows in standard and high definition (HDTV available only in the U.S.)"

HD broadcasts are not only available in the US, I watch HDTV on my Media Center PC quite frequently here in Australia.

I guess I really need to try to use some of the Media Center features on my Windows Ultimate PC.

However I really hate Vongo with a vengance, after HP installed that on my Media Center 2005 PC and it couldnt be uninstalled.  I really hate software that cant be uninstalled, software that causes errors when uninstalled is also a pain.

I cant really describe the hate that Vongo caused, hate is the right word.

Whats amazing is by reading these forums people even blamed Microsoft for this mess:

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7587_102-0.html?forumID=69&messageID=2163108&threadID=201778

Maybe in Ultimate and Media Center Vongo wont be as bad?

I followed this,

  1. Click Start.

  2. Open Windows Media Center.

  3. Scroll to Online Media, and open Explore.

  4. For Internet TV, scroll to TV & Movies.

  5. Move right to Internet TV.

I quite didn't get what is meant by "open Explore" in 3rd point as I didn't have any control named Explore

But, I just clicked on Online Media and then I got TV&Movies, but it says "No service found", same.

Can anyone help me here?

Is this what Microsoft's new marketing strategy supposed to try to do? If so, it's greatly needed. Most people don't really know what they're getting with Windows Vista, and the launching campaign wasn't much but an exciting one. Information is needed; people don't know that the Mac ads are in fact biased are not scientific research infomercials.

I'm pretty disappointed that there are so many services not available outside the US. I'd used Media Center a lot more if MSoft would start catering to Europe and other territories at the same time.

Good addition to Media Center would be providing Internet TV & Radio stations and we users choosing them to add...things like Joost and other things are getting popular now and Media Center being a good tool can be enhanced with these

I also have the Business edition. And I would upgrade to Ultimate if the upgrade price was exactly the same as the difference in the retail prices..i.e. $100...but because MS has made an exception and raised the upgrade price to $140, I'm not upgrading.

Wow...dont know what happened, now my Media Center is picking up all those channels, but as others have mentioned, many doesnt open here (NZ) and it says that the service is available only for US :( (especially the MovieLink)

I really like Media Center in Vista and use it to record TV when our DVD recorder with Hard drive is already busy. The only thing is that it does not seem to recognize Jersey (UK) post codes when setting up the channels: only post codes from Mainland Britan seem to be recognised. Can something be done about this?

Also I must say that since the last Windows updates this November my system seems to go to sleep much better. Instead of having to leave my computer on waiting for a recording to start, I can now put it to sleep and it will wake-up to record programs when the time has come.

I would like to get media center now but wont as I have explained below.

http://techdribble.wordpress.com/2007/10/10/microsoft-continues-to-ripoff-australians/

What sense does Media Center make if you have no services that work with it. My brother lives in Germany, and he has dozens of online on-demand programs, that's really cool. I live in Spain, and there is literally nothing, three or four regional programs (I don't even understand them as they don't come in spanish but in some regional language), and that's it. And I have found no way of getting programs or services from another country, I guess it's IP-bound. Not very nice...

I have two PCs running Vista Ultimate—can I use the same Xbox as an extender for both PCs, or do I need a separate extender for each PC? I searched the knowledgebase and the Extender site, but couldn’t find this question addressed specifically. My guess is that I need a separate extender for each PC, but I just want to confirm that. Can anyone help or point me to the answer? Thanks!

Thanks for all the comments and questions... here are a few updates:

newscientist2000 on Dec 3: The VONGO service for Windows Media Center is a completely new experience, and is well-worth trying. You can find it in the Online Media section of Windows Media Center.

chakkaradeep Dec 3: Online Media is not yet available in New Zealand, so you won’t see the Explore option in your version of Windows Media Center. Online Media is available in 34 countries today. We’ll be adding new countries in 2008.

Espiox Dec 4: Many of the services found in Windows Media Center are restricted to the regions from which they originate. Due to rights and territory limitations, we can’t offer every service in every country. However, you’ll find more and more services in Europe that are available in multiple countries, such as FunSpot, mceWeather, and TV On Time.

saulc Dec 5: You can have up to five Extenders running from the same PC, but you cannot share two PCs with one Extender.

As usual, EU is considered in a second time, then we should wait to enjoy this features (wait, if will be ever introduced in EU).

Thanks Ben Reed for the reply.

I actually tried out the Internet TV beta, real nice interface although the older machine I was testing on was probably had too little memory (512mb) to run Media Center nicely, or maybe it was my slow internet connection.  On a newer computer it would actually be pretty nice, I watched some Zeroes and Comedy Central which was pretty entertaining!

Guess I'll try Vongo when I get a better machine, its actually looks like a good service to test when your on vacation and away from the house e.g. at Christmas.

PingBack

http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2007/12/03/try-windows-media-center-you-may-already-have-it.aspx

The only thing missing in the sport section is the cricket scores & stats.

India has a cricket league which is new and probably could be incroportation into the media center sports section http://icl.msncricket.com/, if not the cricket info from the ICC. (Internation cricket council). Lot of people from Australia, India, England, Newzealand, Pakistan, Srilanka, West Indies watch lot of cricket.

Cricket section would be huge plus.

I like media center but a feature that would make it truly extraordinary would be the ability to use another vista box as a media extender.  It would be great for instance to be able to use my laptop (over my lan) in another room to watch tv.  WebGuide is what I am currently using, but it would be great if it were an actual Microsoft product that did the extending, not someone else trying to extend Microsoft's products.

How does one turn off Windows Media Center in Vista Home Premium?  I don't use it and would like to disable it as I noticed there were processes in the background running for Media Center.

I love Media Center in my Vista Ultimate copy.

Hovewer, I was very disappointed with the Internet TV feature. Here's why. My home country is Ukraine, but I work and live in US now. My PC is set to Russian locale, so all non-Unicode programs could show themselves properly (and, boy, it helps: Outlook for instance can't show russian-speaking Yahoo! Groups properly with locale being set to US). For some reason Windows Vista uses locale to determine the availability of the services. C'mon, guys: I live in US, I bought my (US-English, not Russian, BTW) copy of Ultimate and now you're discriminating me just because I can't set locale to US!? The same thing with Weather Gadget for Sidebar, the same thing with Hold'em Poker extra. I think you HAVE TO reconsider such approach of detecting user's location.

in Italy nothing??

First of all, I think MS not really cares about media center users outside the US. Bad EPG data quality, no support for DVB-S pc-cards, no support for dealers selling mce pcs...

Also I bought a XBOX360 only to use it as an extender. But I rather use a second pc to be able to stream dvds (kids do scratche dvds..) or browse the music library (which is very slow on xbox with its remote)...

Anyway, for me MediaCenter looks nice but has too much limitations for a daily use in Europe.

Christian

Having a way to measureless webpages connected with this is beyond compare.

I might like the media center if it worked.  It did a fine job of searching my computer for pictures.  I can view every single folder that contains a photo, but not one photo (jpg).  All folders are empty.  It is hard for the layperson to use if it doesn't do what it is supposed to.  I have spent hours trying to figure it out.  Funny that all my photos are viewable in windows media player.

It would be a nice programm if i got it to work on my Vista computer.I am getting a constant error.Namely this one:

Files needed to display video are not installed or not working correctly

PLease could you help me

Do i need codecs to watch online tv and how do i add online tv-channels.All works fine except for online-tv

Why not make a choice of different  packages of online tv that you can install in your mediacenter and a fix for the problems.I googled al day today and found no solution to my problem:

Files needed to display video are not installed or not working correctly.

This only happened when i tried online tv.Also some online tvfiles couldn`t be found.

Error after error.This time it`s

cannot find videofile

More errors:Now i only have one channel left in tv and movies

When are you going to fix the bugs related to subchannel support for ota hdtv? You can manually add the channels in, but the guide still doesn't support it. Sloppy testing on Microsoft's part, but what else is new.

Ben, I emailed you already regarding this issue several days ago and expect a response. This bug must be fixed.

I just purchased a new laptop with Vista Premium.  I have an Xbox 360 that I can use as a Media Center Extender.  I currently subscribe to Directv satellite service. What is the difference in using a tv tuner versus a capture card besides that the capture card is less expensive.  It seems to me that since my TV is always on channel 3 that I can't really tune into any other channels or can it change the channels through the Directv box? What does the tv tuner card do that the capture card cannot do?  Is there anything that I can read more about using Satillite TV with Vista Media Center?

Thanks

I do not see the 'Explore' button under the 'Online Media' menu in Media Center (Vista Home Premium). Unfortunately, I could not find a solution to this through forums. Can anyone here help me this?

I would like to know how to enable the Online Media programs for my media center?

I have used media center since the XP version, and like the functionality.  Now, I'm running Vista Home Premium.

I'm pleased with the quality of one hour TV shows, and up until now, I had not really tried recording movies lasting more than one hour.

Whenever I record a movie, Media Center breaks the movie into either two or three files.  I would really prefer just one file per movie.

Is there a setting I should change somewhere?  I haven't been able to find one.  Otherwise, why would MC split the movies?

I have just built a new computer using Vista Ultimate software and the Asus 5K Premium motherboard with a Intel Quad Core processor and 4 gig of memory. When I try to setup the Media Center it tells me it can't find the Hauppauge 1800 tuner card which is certified for Vista Media Center. I have spent hours on this and it seems the problem is not with card, since Vista displays the card in device manager as working and Beyond TV software uses the card to display tv and to record. It seems other individuals are having the same problem regardless of the tuner card. will Microsoft ever fix the Media software?