[DigeratiPrime]

It was announced a short while ago (Fiji), but the details are now out so we don't have to wait for CEDIA.

From http://thegreenbutto...ead/282555.aspx

Quote

On July 16th, 2008, Microsoft released an update to the version of Windows Media Center included with Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate to our OEM partners - this update is referred to as the “Windows® Media Center TV Pack”. In order to ensure that users get the best experience possible, this update will only be available from OEMs, as they are best positioned to provide the testing and hardware configurations for a great customer experience. This is due to the fact that in some geographies there are specific technical and hardware requirements for the Windows Media Center TV Pack that are best handled by the OEMs. We are working closely with our OEM partners as they finalize their decisions on Windows Media Center TV Pack products.

The Windows Media Center TV Pack is primarily targeted at adding support for additional international broadcast standards including:

o Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting – Terrestrial (ISDB-T) Digital television standard for Japan
o Digital Video Broadcasting – Satellite (DVB-S) free-to-air satellite standards in Europe
o Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial (DVB-T) digital television with improved user experience in Europe
o ClearQAM (Unencrypted Digital Cable)in the United States
o Interactive television with integrated Broadcast Markup Language (BML) in Japan and Multimedia and Hypermedia information coding Expert Group (MHEG) (MHEG5) in Europe

This version does not include native support for subscription-based satellite tuners or the H.264 video standard. We test many features in beta releases, and optimize our feature set in the final code for the best user experience.

We do want the Windows Media Center community to know that Microsoft will continue to improve upon the Windows Media Center experience for our customers worldwide, by adding content partnerships and enhanced features. We will share these developments as they become available.

Apparently the update can be applied on top of Vista Home Premium or Ultimate for x86 and x64. I am really excited about the ClearQAM support too!

[LUZR4LIFE]

Nice find, Thanks for sharing

[CoffeeFiend]

DVB support (probably just cards with BDA drivers though), clear QAM too? Wow! About freaking time. That's the kind of things XP MCE should've had a long time ago. Now once Windows 7 MCE supports "subscription-based satellite tuners", if they make their menu layout not suck, and also support other formats better (like H.264/AC3 in .mkv), then it might finally be worth using for once. Making this OEM-only though is a bad idea.

But then again, it's still going to need a lot more work, like support for switched digital video (SDV), which is what most cable providers are moving to (clear QAM support is too little too late, and CableCard never really caught on and is quite problematic from what I've seen). And there's no excuse for not using CI modules and smartcards for DVB tuners, the specs aren't that hard to implement (there's even open source implementations of it), and that's features people have had using other apps for many, many years -- again, too little too late (Windows 7 might narrow the gap with DVB apps we've had/been using for nearly 10 years). Also, MythTV has been supporting QAM and even encrypted DVB streams for just about forever, plus, the menu layout doesn't suck, it supports most formats better, it's free, and you can have separate front/back ends and even play what's on other computers as if it was local, it supports more tuners, it can automatically delete TV ads for you, it has a console emulator front-end, etc. Best of all, MythTV doesn't have MCE's DRM. Windows 7 still won't have most of those. So just hope for Windows 8 to finally deliver, or use something else and have those same features today. Even on Windows there's plenty of alternatives to MCE (e.g. SageTV)

It's sad to see that Microsoft has nothing better to offer. They certainly have a lot of great programmers, they have the power/influence/money to make MCE work with almost any device or provider out there, and the payoff would be quite nice (being on every computer in all living rooms). Yet, they're consistently behind on features and everything else. It feels like they're holding off on features just to make us upgrade to the next version, which is still going to suck unfortunately (just wait for the next! this time it'll be good!)

Also, I stopped wishing for MCE remotes to be useful in anything else than MCE itself. Why make a remote that sends WM_KEYPRESS messages that every app will be able to use, when you can make one that sends WM_APPCOMMAND messages instead? I mean, if it was just for special buttons, sure, but when half of the basics stuff uses those... Just try to get one to control all the basic functionality in Winamp an you'll see what I'm saying. Funnily, Windows MCE remotes work a LOT better under Linux than they do in Windows...

This post has been edited by crahak: 10 August 2008 - 02:00 AM

[DigeratiPrime]

crahak, on Aug 10 2008, 02:51 AM, said:

...support other formats better (like H.264/AC3 in .mkv), then it might finally be worth using for once.

...Best of all, MythTV doesn't have MCE's DRM.

It is possible to play MKV in VMC using Haali Media Splitter, VMC has its own AC3 filter but it sucks use AC3filter instead, h.264 can be decoded by replacing a dll in the system32 folder. <- I have verified this all works (proof below), but I am not sure if any of it is compliant with the TOS though...

In your sig you have links to debunk Vista DRM but you maintain VMC has DRM, can you elaborate?

MKV with h.264 and AC3, its not fullscreen so I can take a screenshot

[CoffeeFiend]

DigeratiPrime, on Aug 10 2008, 02:22 PM, said:

It is possible to play MKV in VMC using Haali Media Splitter, VMC has its own AC3 filter but it sucks use AC3filter instead, h.264 can be decoded by replacing a dll in the system32 folder. <- I have verified this all works (proof below), but I am not sure if any of it is compliant with the TOS though...

Yeah, I know. I have the latest Haali, CoreAVC and AC3Filter, and even using a reg tweak (found on the green button site iirc), it doesn't find half my files (which play perfectly fine in any old media player). Plus, you have to browse the drives/folders to get to the files which is kind of an annoyance (no central place with all your movies found by alphabetical order or anything). And those movies aren't in the same place in the menus than the movies recorded from TV, which makes no sense to me. And I'm not getting into Windows' issues with indexing stuff from mount points either (another thing that works 1000x better with MythTV). Using it has been a pretty bad experience as far as I'm concerned. And now, not only do I feel Vista Ultimate cheats you out of your money, but the remote is just as bad as it sucks for anything else than MCE.

DigeratiPrime, on Aug 10 2008, 02:22 PM, said:

In your sig you have links to debunk Vista DRM but you maintain VMC has DRM, can you elaborate?

The debunking the DRM part in my sig, is about all the FUD saying Vista would prevent you from playing your own files, that it had that extreme DRM at its core and all that BS. All the OS has DRM-wise, is support for playback of encrypted formats like Blu-Ray, nothing to lock your stuff from yourself.

But as far as MCE goes, that's a completely different story. Recordings can, and often do use DRM. And even the same guy who debunked the DRM FUD about Vista itself acknowledges the issues of MCE DRM like in this post, or even on Microsoft's own blogs. They even had to release fixes for their MCE DRM (e.g. KB913800). Also, there's been some reports all around the web from people whose recordings didn't work because of the broadcast flag before (yes, MCE supports/obeys it). Things like that.

This post has been edited by crahak: 10 August 2008 - 12:56 PM

[DigeratiPrime]

Even with the MKV, h264 and AC3 working in VMC it still has drawbacks: no seeking and no hardware acceleration. I only care about VMC because other people I know like the integrated and simplified experience, so I try to support it. But I personally use MPC-HC for all my video

Thanks for for the information about DRM in Media Center, I had heard about it but not really looked into it. And I agree that most of the attention concerning DRM in Vista was FUD, unfortunately groups like BadVista are still spreading the FUD.

[TurricaN]

Before: http://badvista.fsf....o_littering.png

was once: http://badvista.fsf....o_littering.png