Microsoft's War on WMC Continues

[Pauven]

Windows Media Center users have clung to Windows 7 as a lifeline to keep their beloved Windows Media Center running. This always seemed the smart choice, especially considering how Microsoft continually cripples WMC installations on Windows 10.

Unfortunately, Microsoft has just amped up their attacks on WMC. Windows 7 is no longer safe.

Read this BetaNews article for the latest atrocity

Chameleon MediaCenter will continue to improve and strive to add functionality to support WMC users.

Paul

[Teddyboy]

The article is a bit hyperbolic as is the subject line. The speculation as to why Microsoft would do something like that is irrelevant. Windows10 is buggy and Linux is not? Windows and Linux are complex operating systems with millions of lines of code. Most people can’t or don’t want to switch to Linux because applications that people use are only available on Windows for example.

Windows 7 has been around for a long time. We all knew that this day would finally come. Media centers 10 foot interface is great and you can set it up without leaving it, but most people don’t want to deal with the complexity of a pc sitting in thier living room. I’m surprised that Microsoft nor almost anyone else came out with a embedded system. Ceton was the only one that tried, but it never saw the light of day. People want a box like a Roku, Apple TV, or a Tivo. Those platforms have there own issues, but they’re sandboxed. You don’t have to deal with drivers, etc. They work.

It’s time to move on unfortunately. Your thoughts.

Oh could you please deactivate my license. I forgot to do that when I reinstalled windows 7 because I couldn’t leave well enough alone.

[Pauven]

You're right about the article being hyperbolic. My main interest in the article was that it illustrated that Microsoft does have a way to negatively affect WMC even if you don't allow any updates. I truly thought that by essentially sandboxing a Win7 WMC PC, you could effectively run it for decades - at least until the hardware gives out. Prior to that article, it never occurred to me that Microsoft could start cutting off services remotely.

It's certainly possible that this is the only thing Microsoft can and ever will do, but my fear is that this is just the first step, and that more services will be disabled in the future, further breaking WMC even on Win7. I sure hope I'm wrong.

It’s time to move on unfortunately. Your thoughts.

That's the exact reason I created CMC, to move on from WMC. It'll only get better from here. I hope you stay for the journey, and contribute ideas to help make it better.

Oh could you please deactivate my license. I forgot to do that when I reinstalled windows 7 because I couldn’t leave well enough alone.

Done. Though I would recommend you email or use the contact form in the future for these types of requests for faster response. I could have easily missed that request here.

Paul

[Teddyboy]

Thanks Paul! Yes in the future I will use the contact form. I’m looking at your platform and J. River media center as well, I may even look at Alonnis which is a much higher end platform. I may even look at Apple TV. All options are on the table, but I tend to like your platform the most.

One thing about J River is it has its own embedded player. It’s played everything that I’ve thrown at it. Blu-ray playback is a recent addition since MC24 which is what I have installed. Blu-ray menus are not enabled by default. Once enabled and you play a Blu-ray movie for the first time MC will download and embed java so that only MC is aware of it and not the operating system. It’s not perfect but really close to perfect in terms of playback. Personally I haven’t run into any issues playing movies yet. They’ve developed a platform for directshow. Red Octoberhttps://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Red_October

It just works and I don’t have to be concerned about building a graph or controlling the filters or any dependencies. All of that is handled through Red October and is completely invisible to me. Having to mess around with a external player has been frusting for me. Powerdvd drives me crazy sometimes.

I’m pointing this out to you as a possible solution for a embedded player. Maybe it’s possible for you to license that part of their software. It’s something to consider if you haven’t already considered it and decided to go down a different path.

I’ve noticed that when I navigate in the interface it’s a little jerky. It should be silky smooth when I’m looking for something to play.

[Pauven]

Doing an embedded player is incredibly hard. Perhaps harder than it needs to be with the programming language I use for development. I have started development on my own embedded player, and I've struggled with things I thought would be simple like listing the available audio tracks and changing the track. Perhaps at some point it will become usable, though to be fair a company like J River has 100 times the resources I have, so the odds are stacked against me.

I know it is not as elegant as an embedded player, but I do find that integrating CMC with all the big media players allows it to leverage what they bring to the table, and allows me more time to focus on the media browsing experience and better integration with My Movies.

I feel honored to even be mentioned in the same context as J. River, Alonnis, even Apple TV. I really don't think you can go wrong with any of these players, and they all have different strengths and weaknesses. You just gotta figure out what works best for you. I do have a different vision for CMC that over time will further distinguish it from those other media players.

Red October sounds interesting for what it does. I'll have to take a closer look at it to see if I can leverage its functionality. Though regardless of how I do an embedded media player - if I do it I would most likely automate the building of the graphs, just as I automate the integration with external players. I always believe it is better for the app developer to tackle those types of setup headaches for the user when possible.

For the most part, PowerDVD just does what I need it to do - playback whatever I tell it to play, and close when I hit the close button. I only have trouble with PowerDVD when I give it too much power. I try to disable everything I don't need, especially the auto-play behaviors, to dumb it down to the level I need.

I'm also looking at embedding the Chrome browser into CMC, for many reasons and chief among them is to then embed VLC inside Chrome. Hopefully by doing this I can playback HDHomeRun content (CMC -> Chrome -> VLC -> HDHomeRun). But if I can get it to that point, then technically I have embedded VLC in CMC, so that might work as a decent embedded solution.

Paul