[mythtv-users] MythTV vs. Windows Media Center

[Justin Johnson]

On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 3:37 PM, Eric Sharkey <eric at lisaneric.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 4:28 PM, Reynolds, Brian
> <Brian.Reynolds at fiserv.com> wrote:
>> I'd love to hear any experiences with WinMCE (positive or
>> negative) from you guys.
>
> This is probably the wrong list for that.
>
> Most of us are pretty anti-Windows, so the fact that MCE is built on
> top of Windows is already enough to turn most of us away.
>
> Eric

I'll bite; I've been using mythTV for 3 years now, and about seven
months ago thought I'd give WinMC a try, since I had a free license
for windows 7. I thought I'd give it a try because I too was looking
at the advent of cablecard and knew that I would likely need to change
my mythtv setup soon.
While it wasn't an all-around bad experience, there were several
things that I did not like:
1) While the UI was shiny, it offered no customization and I found it
difficult to navigate.
2) Using the on-screen guide was the only way to schedule a recording.
I couldn't just browse through an alphabetical list of all shows in
the next two weeks. This is how I regularly schedule things in mythTV,
in combination with mythweb.
3) Scheduling was a nightmare. This is probably one of the most
compelling reasons to use mythTV, the scheduler is far beyond anything
I've ever seen. Add to that the support of multirec and 3 physical
cards (2 digital, 1 analog) turns into 5+ cards, pretty much capable
of maneuvering around any conflicts.
4) I missed the commercial skip, but it wasn't as big a deal as the
ability to play back at 1.5x. When you record for 5 hours a night,
often multiple programs at a time, and several more during the day,
timestretch becomes a necessity.

All-in-all, I'd say MC is about what I would expect from any cable
company (nevermind that it's way above what you actually get from the
cc). You accept their design in exchange for near-full compatibility
with their system. I qualify that only because VOD doesn't work with
cablecard (I might be wrong).
I think most people here would agree, it's better than what the
cableCo has to offer, but nowhere near on the same level as mythTV.
--Justin Johnson