Windows XP Media Center 20th Anv. - Gateway FMC-901X

[@WizardTim]

This brought back some horrible memories of dealing with disgusting anti-consumer DVD region locking, Windows Media Center (later versions at least) would allow a limited number of region changes which you could abuse to reset the counter but it was still a pain to constantly have to switch and reset, soon found out that software like VLC just ignored region locking, never looked back.

[@MultiWirth]

Nowadays it´s a pain to play blu rays. DVD and BD formats won´t play in Windows 10 out of the box anymore and BD in particular never did as far as i know. But we have MakeMKV and it literally copies the disk and puts it in a flexible mkv file which can be played using Media Player or VLC. So i don´t even try to play them directly. Another benefit: I put the files on my network storage and access it easily on my Android TV.

[@Bewefau]

Why would you ever need to change the region? I never once had too.

[@goletsa]

It's not Windows MCE problem. In DVD Drive you have limited count of region switches. It does have interface for that.

[@nana-chan4550]

This is actually a hardware limitation built into most DVD drives. But there is a tool called MCSE that allows you to patch the firmware to remove that restriction. Sadly the same is not possible for blu-ray...

[@mrjohnnyk]

Yeah, the dark days of early DVD playback on computers really sucked.

[@succuvamp_anna]

2005 edition was a MASSIVE upgrade, it was basically XP Pro with Media Center tacked on, it's the edition I would run back in the day.

[@micahnightwolf]

Same here. I miss that old machine I used back then. I still have it, but towards the end of its use, it started suffering major slowdowns and the hard drives were making a bunch of sad hard drive noises. They're probably long since dead by now.

[@MrModamanReviews]

That's the edition I used. I had a Haupagge USB tuner connected to it. I also used my Xbox 360 as a client on another tv. It was great and I used it until I bought a Windows 7 pro PC that had media center standard. That one used both the USB tuner and a networked HD Homerun dual tuner. I really liked it better than my TiVo.

[@HunterTinsley]

@@MrModamanReviews Same here. Still have my old Haupagge card and it works with OTA broadcasts.

[@Browningate]

Isn't that what everyone else got funneled to? I remember our early HP MCE machine having the "Media Center Edition" branding on the boot animation, but that ultimately got replaced by the "Windows XP" with the blue loading bar, normal SP3 info on winver, etc.

[@TheGeneratedNarukami06]

Saaaame here. Too bad that I didn't have the Windows XP Media Center Edition on my computer, but good think that Windows XP (with SP3 of course) was the first operating system that I was using when I was a little kid.

[@jonathanschober1032]

This was a wonderful memory. My dad and I bonded a lot setting up a custom built machine with Media Center. He worked at Dell and had access to MSDN, so he could get the ISOs. We ran the 2005 version and had both analog and when it became standard, DTV tuner cards. We also ripped music and used it exactly as intended for many many years

[@xDownSetx]

I used Vista's Media Center a ton back in the day and it was definitely my favorite version. With a Hauppauge dual tuner I was loving life. That is until our cable company encrypted all of their channels and the fun came to an abrupt end.

[@cszolee7979]

I remember the magic of getting my first hardware MPEG2 encoder Hauppauge card and MS OEM MCE remote. Too bad there's no MCE anymore, but the remote still works perfectly with Win10/11.

[@resolvanlemmy]

Vista was gold.

[@CantankerousDave]

Yeah, the sudden loss of ClearQAM sucked hard.

[@JimmyRussle]

@@resolvanlemmy Not many people share that opinion lol. It was TERRIBLE when it was released. The system requirements were too high and builders were bringing out computers that could barely run it. Beyond that, the driver support was horrible and there were bugs galore. Over time it did get better and by the time Windows 7 came out, Vista was decent. Windows 7 was what Vista should have been.

[@resolvanlemmy]

@@JimmyRussle honestly, I tried it for the first time in 2008, and I never experienced any of the problems you described, in fact, I barely experienced any issues with it at all, probably because I got a new computer running it at the time. Also lack of driver support was the fault of device manufacturers, not Microsoft itself. Yet for some reason I don't understand why Vista was still hated even years after the fiasco ended. Sure, basically every Windows release before and after it had problems at first and ended up being loved later on (maybe except Windows Me, but I never tried it so I have no opinion on it), but not Vista, in fact, most of the haters never even tried the damn thing. It brought us features that are standard in modern Windows too. This is why I love Vista so much, in fact, I say it's the absolute best version of Windows ever, yes even better than Windows 7. I got the latter in 2011, and I was pretty disappointed by it, idk it just looked a lot more basic and uninspired. So yeah, get a VM, try out Windows Vista, and see if your opinion changes afterwards.

[@TheDuumiMuumi]

My first so-called "own TV" was actually a TV tuner card in my computer, I used Media Center app with that. It actually worked pretty well.

[@brostenen]

I remember building XP-MCE machines from scratch in 2003 to 2006 as an option customers could choose when buying computers. The trick was to find a tuner card, that was compatible. And you needed nvidia pure motion software as well as a bunch of codecs. Other than that, machines were just based on standard PC hardware. Like Asus P5G motherboards, and Radeon gfx.

[@matthewjbauer1990]

I put an ATI All-in-Wonder in a MCE build back in 2005 or 2006 and it worked just fine. No Nvidia anything and it worked just fine.

[@brostenen]

@@matthewjbauer1990 Yup. But to have access to all functions like live tv and so on, one needed that hauppage or what it was called, that had two tuners. I dont remember much, because someone else did the hardware purchases. I just build the machines from scratch, installed the software. And made sure it was shipped to the customer, or called them on phone to say it was ready for pickup.

[@NJRoadfan]

MCE required a tuner card with onboard MPEG hardware compression. The All-in-Wonder cards lacked this despite being a seemingly perfect choice for a media center PC. So you were usually stuck with the Hauppage WinDVR style cards.

[@brostenen]

@@NJRoadfan Ahhh.... That explains it a lot. Thanks. 🙂

[@thingi]

@@NJRoadfan Or BlackMagic cards. I had six digital (UK freeview) tuners (2 per card) which required a registry hack to enable them all in MC. An nvidia card and nvdvd codec + klite sorted all the codecs, was fantastic for games too. As a bonus you got Windows XP Professional features included as part of MCE instead of just home too. Hahahahaha I still chuckle knowing they had to include all the Windows Professional features because they were needed by MCE due to an oversight when designing the OS :D

[@rkrenicki]

Another big factor of MCE was CableCard support. That is why there were special drivers for the video cards, and the BIOS of the computers had special things in them as well so that encrypted Cable TV could be properly decrypted and protected while being displayed and recorded. That particular unit does not have the PCI CableCard card, but it was an option on most if not all of the models out there.

[@TheIrisCZ]

Oh, I remember these. The Media Center PCs never really clicked with the people in Czech republic, where I live and because of that, there was a lot of unsold stock in electronics shops soon after their launch. It got so bad, they started running sales on these computers and just for the price of the hardware alone, it was a steal for anyone capable of running normal Windows on these computers. Because some of them were meant as the "family computers", the higher tiers even had quite capable GPUs for some gaming. I wanted to grab one back then, but didn't have the money. But my friend did and if I remember correctly, he used it for at least 5 years and had only the best things to say about that beast for that price.

[@Bewefau]

damn buy me one XD

[@Ikeaboi]

Hey, im from czechia too

[@RadOo]

To be honest I completely missed those things. Windows XP Home it was and then Windows 7. It looks cool and I get the idea but, if you already have a PC. You have a media center right there.

[@RadOo]

@@Ikeaboi I wouldn't think I would see Czech folks here KEKW

[@Bewefau]

@@RadOo its for people who want to keep a clean look in there tv set.

[@Primal1861]

Your Windows XP vids are top notch, I thoroughly enjoy your appreciation for this era. Currently on the hunt for an XP Media Center! Please continue more of these XP era vids! Especially to go as far as having a period correct desk even! Kudos and props!

[@s8wc3]

I was big into the HTPC craze in the late 00s and honestly i'm still into them now even though I have no real use for one, love seeing these funky machines and all the cool addons that used to be out there. I was never much of a gamer so I can't commentate on the video card driver situation, but I can tell you that it was possible to obtain MCE legitimately from computer parts distributors as a white box OEM copy. MediaCenter's UX is second to none even today, it was better at watching TV than my actual TV, had An Add-In For That and could be hacked to high hell. It's loss is lamented by the few that still care.

[@konradstrachan]

I used Vista + 7s Media Center a LOT back in the day - I built a dedicated media centre PC for exactly this purpose. It was pretty fun optimising hardware selection to make something slim and silent.

[@landspide]

By memory mediacenter ran Iris an internal replacement for GDI, kind of like skia (google purchased this compositor) and core graphics for Mac, but I don't think many outside of Microsoft knew about it. It is such a pity it didn't end up in the original Windows Mobile proper (I think Zune ran it though), it was one of the reasons (IMHO) iPhone nailed the UI for mobile devices. Great video mate, such high quality content 😀👍

[@landspide]

IIRC, you could also use mediacenter's tv stream via XBMC, I remember doing this and casting a dual tuner to a couple of original chipped xboxes running XBMC in the house, it did work reasonably well (channel changes, etc).

[@s8wc3]

@@landspide Yep I used this up until recently with ServerWMC. It worked perfectly, it could even wake up the WMC machine automatically and it would go back to sleep on it's own. Nowadays the TV stations tend to have web streams, you can just point Kodi to a url that contains the stream playlist and program guide for your area and it works off that. Only downside is you miss out on content the station has broadcast rights but not streaming rights to, usually sports stuff.

[@MeatBattery]

Had Gateway Media Center for my main TV for several years. Was kinda crusty, but with the right tuner card and network connection to my DVD server, was ahead of its time in some ways. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

[@reggiebenes2916]

I built my own with a Vista computer with Media Center and it worked great. I think they fixed some of the issues from the XP version, and if not it was pretty easy to get most stuff working since it was basically a regular PC. It would still lag pretty bad though with a huge music collection, but I always loved the interface.

[@NJRoadfan]

For some weird reason, OEMs started loading XP MCE 2005 on all their machines from 2005 to Vista's release. I have several Dell Inspiron laptops with it and a Dimension E520 that came with it. None of the computers came with a tuner card and I don't recall needing special video drivers on them. I think companies did this because MCE 2005 used XP Pro as a base but the license was the same price as Home. Also, none of them seemed to have Royale set as the default theme on the factory image. One big no-no I discovered is that you can't slipstream XP SP3 onto a MCE2005 install disc. It completely breaks the installer which appears to be clobbered together using batch files to setup all the extra software packages. You can slipstream new storage drivers though as all these late-era XP machines usually have AHCI and/or RAID mode enabled for their SATA controllers by default.

[@TehPoopDood]

Media Center looks so sexy, even today. It may even blend into the new material design craze quite well! Such a cool look back at a time that I didn't get to experience, being a media buff back then would have been so exciting!

[@van0tot100]

It aged really well

[@EnricoAnsaloni]

I remember being able to run the Media Center software on regular XP, and it worked fine whiteout driver issues. I used it for a while then switched to MythTV on Linux which was much better and without copy restrictions... I remember I had the same Hauppauge card as the PC in the video. Now I 'm using an external USB TV tuner with tvheadend and stream from that to all my PCs with Kodi

[@olive8604]

Yeah I also seem to remember using Media Center as a standalone software option with XP Home Version, but now I’m not sure if I’m misremembering using the Vista version instead.

[@EnricoAnsaloni]

@@olive8604 it was XP because I never used Vista, you could download the Meda Center software package from Microsoft homepage and it worked on both XP SP3 and Vista

[@MichaelSeneschal]

I love channels like this! What a fantastic job. Thanks for making this.

[@ShadeAssault]

My first PC that was my own was a Sony VAIO with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ and an nVidia GeForce 6150LE. It came with WinXP Media Center on it. At the time I was just getting into computers and learning operating systems and such so I ended up with Win98, WinXP Pro, multiple Linux distros, and eventually Windows 7 on it. Always wondered why WinXP Media Center was so hard to get reinstalled and now I know why. I tried using the media center stuff, but I was more interested in games at the time so never got into it. After watching this video, I realize that system was probably the best thing in our household. Thanks for the great content! Keep it up!

[@HouseOfFunQM]

Anyone who might be a little lost: this wildly predates e.g. Spotify, any streaming music. We basically all used iTunes or Winamp, and would share giant (50GB lol) USB hard drives with our entire music collection on. You'd end up with mountains of duplicates, different quality rips, shit radio records, accidental porn videos, and loads of other crap xD

[@honzam.1953]

9:30 PVR recorders are still available on the market, and they still work the same way as back in the day. I still use one as main timeshifting device

[@wintermute740]

I run a MythTV setup back in that timeframe... Two dual-tuner Hauppauge cards for a total of four tuners... Plus I could auto-rip DVDs and CDs upon insertion... And I could tuck my noisy server away in a different room and just run super-quiet frontend machines at my TVs. I think my favorite feature was when I added Bluetooth dongles to my frontend machines. As long as I took my phone with me, I could move to a different TV in my house and playback would stop on the original TV and pick back up at the new one, without any interaction from me. It's funny that I was living more in the future 20-ish years ago than I am now. lol

[@neoasura]

I was big into piracy back then, and I tweaked the hell out of this to look sleek on a TV, friends and family were blown away wondering what kind of high tech magic I was using to play music, movies, etc on the big screen. It was great for entertaining everyone. And I've been building HTPCs ever since, but moved on to Kodi.

[@philcarter9738]

This takes me back! I built my own media center PC back in the day, just in a normal (very cheap) case and a very mediocre AMD Sempron, even manged to get the OEM remote from a retailer in the UK called Novatech (still going today) Media Center itself I "acquired" elsewhere 😄 Was great for playing back downloaded content and I seem to remember even having MAME running on it. It wasn't a patch on this beast though!

[@tiadaid]

I had a Toshiba laptop with this. I went out to buy a TV tuner card, but was highly annoyed when I found out that it couldn't be used with the Media Center!

[@stephenmorrish]

I made use of Media centre on Win7, it was our only TV for several years.

[@JayTheComputerGuy]

media player looks surprisingly modern!

[@projectartichoke]

I have a Gateway GX7022E with XP-MCE. It's still going strong. On its fifth power supply, and I had to replace the optical drives, but other than that no problems. I used to record a lot of TV shows using the Media Center software. The machine is now relegated to being a file server and always-on email and its great for that use.

[@paulgraham4079]

this was just before XBMC, there is files to change the cd scapper and dvdfab was used to remove copy protection from DVDs, a plug in to rip the disks without compression. The software was very configurable also pinnacle made a show center that supported MCXP

[@steeeefano]

Truly an incredible machine. I have an MSI Media Center that I paid around $40 for. I upgraded it with a new processor, maximum RAM, and two hard drives. It also has a VFD display, composite and S-video outputs, and a Hauppauge card. I'm using it to convert my old VHS tapes. I found very little information about it on the internet; I believe they were somewhat obscure machines with few units produced. Great video as always.

[@stephendennis5969]

I had the Gateway Destination xtv350 as a teenager. 36 inch tube, Boston acoustics 5.1 surround it ran windows 98. All the media programs to run the hardware were separate from the os. It two was not upgrade able. It went through several different lives until being dismantled. My one buddy had the 36 inch monitor until he got sick of moving it. That thing was $4000 bucks in 98

[@MichaelSeneschal]

I worked at a Gateway store when this was announced. The store had a living room setup with this computer being the center of it all. The display was also a Gateway plasma TV. I worked at the Gateway store the entire time this machine was on the shelf (until the Gateway store was closed) and the only time I remember someone purchasing one was the actual floor model during the going out of business sale. In other words no one bought it, at the time it was just too expensive to justify. Ha! But super cool. It was almost a ‘look at all the cool things you can do with a Gateway PC’ display that customers would oohh and ahhh at, then they would purchase a $400 PC that basically did the same thing. Fun times fun times.

[@pristbaiser9443]

I almost cross my eyes from reading so much the words go by so fast my eyes hurt, great video!

[@finkelmana]

My period correct way of getting Microsoft software was the big juicy MSDN binder we had at work. Of course, it was for testing... yeah... testing.

[@TheVincentKyle]

Getting one of those binders was like a golden ticket!

[@SikSlayer]

Oh Media Center. I was a part of the community back then, I miss it. It was the best DVR ever, nothing matched it. At it's peak with Media Center in Windows 7, you could tie in Steam's Big Picture Mode to make an all in one box that did everything. I'd love for you to cover the last versions of Media Center!

[@SolarScion]

I was another that built my own XP media center PC from an OEM package that came as a bundle of an ASUS motherboard and the XP MCE DVD. I loved it, and I actually got a lot of use out of the photo module, as it's great for art sets and couch photo viewing. I didn't game on PC much until Windows 7, so I don't remember any of the compatibility problems, and it wasn't expensive since I just bought the promo bundle and built everything else around it. The Microsoft remote and wireless media keyboard were super fly, though. The Gateway's VFD is nice, but the MS keyboard had a really neat design that put the Gateway bundled one to shame. It unfortunately just stopped working after a few years. Every RF wireless keyboard I've had just randomly stopped working after 3-5 years, with no visible reason even after taking it apart.

[@SamsonSilvo]

I remember messing around with the Windows 7 version of Media Center and finding it really fascinating. I couldn't do much with it since I didn't (and still don't) watch live TV enough to care about getting a tuner card, my hard drive space for digital copies of movies and TV shows (legal or "otherwise"...) was limited and I had already moved on to Blu-Rays as my medium of choice for disc-based movies, which WMC unfortunately never supported. But the idea of a simple "living room" style interface that made it more seamless to watch videos on my TV from my couch really stuck with me. Fast forward a few years and now I've now got enough hard drive space to store a massive movie and TV show library (mostly ripped from my own Blu-Ray and DVD collection with only a few obtained "elsewhere") that I now mainly watch from my PC, plugged into my TV, via what I now consider to be WMC's spiritual successor in many ways, Kodi. Funny how that works out. XD

[@micahnightwolf]

My grandfather had an HP Pavilion with Windows XP MCE back in 2005. It ran well enough as a desktop computer and I played a fair few games on it without any issues. But mostly what I used it for was audio file conversions. MCE was unique in that it had a stock audio converter built-in. And I used it all the time to compress MP3s down to 128kbps so I could fit tons and tons of them on my old 1GB Samsung YP-T8Z player. The mid-2000s was a wonderful time to be a teenager.

[@adamwhite2364]

I've still got my MCE 2005 Compaq downstairs, but I'm pretty sure the hard drive is dying. I used it extensively to watch and record cable TV over FireWire, and once I got that set up, it was sweet... Until Comcast jacked the rates up again and I couldn't swing the nearly $200 a month. I recorded everything I could and then cancelled.

[@kingtyphoon]

Very cool video, the Gateway FMC-901X looks like a standard DVD player but it's actually a all in one media center. I never used this personally but it seemed like a good option back in the day.

[@TheFlyingScotsman]

Windows XP MCE made so much sense for me as I was a Uni student in 2006 so it was good to have the one device (my PC) to take with me that I could do my work on, but also relax with. As it was Media Center Edition 2005 it worked very well, on both my 2006 and 2007 custom-built PCs and with MCE being a superset of Windows XP Professional I had access to NTLM controls which I needed for making my University email and Wi-Fi work. Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 will always be special to me!

[@supmofo123]

Thanks for the nostalgia, I remember being hyped getting my hands on a copy

[@PatrickBaptist]

@5:00 That's not the first media center PC to look like that, Dell made one in the late 90s that my highschool had, I graduated in 00, and it looked atlot like stereo equip just like this gateway. It did not run xp media center obviously since that was not a thing yet but Win98SE. This is a cool machine don't get me wrong, it was def faster than the dell Im talking about, it too had a air mouse (can't remember the brand, I thought it was microsoft brand but I cant remember) or the hardware specs but I don't think the CPU was even a GHz. It had a very nice speaker setup with it, very nice for a country bumpkin school to be having. It was the driver-ed PC, had some nice simulator software on it with a steeringwheel with feedback and pedals, prob the nicest wheel setup Ive seen or used in person.

[@Sarcastix7]

My first PC came with media centre edition. I loved it. We didn't have much money so I saved and bought a USB tv tuner to watch live tv. It was great. It eventually got me into xbmc then Kodi. Good times

[@dave4shmups]

I never used Windows Media Center, so this video was fascinating! Great job!

[@michaellegg9381]

I remember using xp sp3 on my Pentium 4 tower pc and i installed media centre on that.. was way more compatible with gaming and was just a normal pc when i needed it to be or ya can run media centre ya could even have media centre start with the pc at start up.. after watching this i realised that the way my setup was is the best way and gave me the best of both worlds.

[@Lagittaja]

My mother still uses Windows 7 and Media Center to watch TV on the HTPC I built for her. Only headache (I've had to deal with) over the years was when her rental place switched from DVB-T to DVB-C. Ended up solving that problem with HDHomerun tuner instead of the Terratec H7. Works like a charm to this day.

[@Wasmachineman]

Please do tell me you're keeping it updated by means of something like the SimpliX Pack.

[@matts.8342]

@@Wasmachineman If all she's using it for is to watch TV, who cares? Even if it gets crypto'd, just reload it. Most I would do is stick it in another subnet so it can't see the rest of the network.

[@nucleartaco04]

2:40 Had this type of computer growing up. Very high end for something made in the 2000s, worked well into the early 2010s.

[@LDrumsOhio]

You took me back with this one. I had one of the HP Media Center computers and used it for a few years till the PSU died. After that inbuilt an XBMC computer running on a PowerPC G5 Mac.

[@branhicks]

I used Media Center on my main TV for years. All the way till windows 8. It. was. amazing. and near perfect IMO. You could rip DVDs to the hard drive and add them to the movie library. It also interfaced with my cable box and pulled HD video straight through the firewire port. a newer extender came out later that let you play everything. It was also integrated into the Xbox 360. You can even use the media center remote on the 360

[@bluey-next777]

6:33 When you select something, it zoom in... Does anyone have some OG Xbox vibes?

[@____.__._.._]

It's so cool, the old "media era" nostalgia.. and also I wonder how the media center invoking button works. I wonder what was between IR receiver and Windows there.

[@jozsefizsak]

This was very useful and timely for me, since I'm replicating a failed system for a friend. Looks like I'll be using the Win 7 version for him. so thank you for the insights into the original . My train of thought was derailed when you said something was most unique though. Unique means there is only one like it so degrees of uniqueness make no sense at all and I never know what meaning is intended. Sometimes it's obviously "most unusual" but not always.

[@kyoudaiken]

This is a good example why I avoided OEM crap all my life.

[@meandmyEV]

Great job with this video! I had an internal cablecard tv tuner in the late 2000s with a home build PC (I obtained MCE “creatively”). It worked wonderfully for several years. The TV interface is still the best I have ever used. I think my tuner card had 4 tuners so I could record a bunch of tv shows at the same time. It was very simple to navigate using a media keyboard with a build in track pad. I had a more modern media PC running channels DVR software but at this point, it is easier just to watch and record TV using a streaming service.

[@mizzymedia]

I loved Media Center growing up, I remember Mostly Vista's and Xbox 360 had it built in as well to connect my PC files.

[@Caisstuff]

This is my favorite version of windows XP, I managed to get this installed on my DIY XP build, and I've been setting it up for multimedia, works pretty good for it's age surprisingly well.

[@awsomewe360]

Whatever you think of iTunes and Apple, I am glad that they used Gracenote for their CD info. Still works with Classic Macs using the first release of iTunes. (This digression comes from his comments on Windows Media Player at 7:20, for people wondering why im talking about this)

[@LuccaRPG]

Watching this channel makes me REALLY FEEL MY AGE. I remember when this was top of the line, you were the king/queen of the hill if you had something like this. Now it's a really slow paperweight. Technology advances amaze me.

[@Smedleydog1]

I built a media center computer that I used for recording TV shows. I was able to buy a copy of the windows media center OS, bought a tuner card that came with a media center remote and even purchased the wireless media center keyboard that had the small trackball in it. I used that system for about 5 or 6 years.

[@robertjones3223]

I worked for OEM at this time and think my own personal MCE XP PC might only one we built but was beast and love it

[@digitalronin7495]

Nice to see a good video about this. I still have a hp media center m470n with nearly identical specs to the machine in this vid. I still fire it up every now and then for a fix of nostalgia

[@K9arcade]

So cool to see these units were a thing. I'm an XP fan and have used one of my old SFFs as a media device on a few occasions around the home. The UI design makes me think that it might've inspired the Kodi player and Xbox later on..

[@unknownsoldier4156]

I should blow the dust off me custom built WinXP-MCE 2005 box I built not long ago. I built it for offline storage and playback of videos, music, dvds, and radio with two of these same PCI tuner/capture cards your system uses but I have not been able to find the drivers needed to make them work with my systems until now so thanks for pointing me that way! As well as the codec pack you shown is something I need to add to it immediately! I changed the theme to Royal Noir as it better suits my night time watching hours but otherwise its an absolute rock solid unit. Rocking a Core 2 Quad (2.83Ghz), 8gb DDR2 ram, GTX 750ti, two tuners, Audigy2, etc, this thing really has no issues even with the few games I play on it. Hopefully I can get it paired to my Windows Home Server for backups!

[@dpeezy615]

That’s really cool learning about this throwback tech

[@demenACE]

I had the Vista MC and used it all the time. Then when Win 8 came out I paid for the MC as well. It worked pretty well. I recorded over the air and fast forwarded thru the commercials. I still have the remote(s) and receivers. It works to put the PC to sleep fast.

[@Cyber_Horse_Studios87]

I’m so glad I got ahold of a Dell restoration disk that has media center edition on it. It’s honestly my favorite version of windows XP out of them all as it’s the version I grew up with.

[@et_yt_official]

12:31 I've used media center edition 2005 and that part isn't true but I am not sure about MCE 2002 & 2004 so I don't know

[@PeteRondeau]

I still use windows media center. Just yesterday I was on the phone with xfinity trying to get them to come out and fix a bad connection causing pixelated video and of course had to go through all the prerequisite trouble shooting first. Had zero luck trying to convince the person that no, my cable-card was not plugged into a TIVO. Incredibly frustrating.

[@BCProgramming]

~3:00 - issues with drivers were because driver packages typically upgraded/changed some windows components or settings which messed up the eHome ActiveX Server files, which messed up the Entertainment Shell. In order to get it to work, you needed to unregister and reregister the ActiveX Server applications in the eHome directory. My guess would be that the ActiveX Server registration might be registering info related to the graphics device, and the Media Center installation program probably does that automatically where standard XP installers don't. Interestingly, though, You get the same errors installing Service Pack 3 onto MCE. Drivers "for" Media Center Edition usually just had some extras or support for Media Center Extensions, but otherwise the same core driver software as XP.

[@fargeeks]

so is this thing worth buying? or not usefull in todays standards?

[@rashdecision]

I had the 2005 edition on my primary computer in the day, a Dell XPS 410 purchased in 2006. I remember thinking it was an odd choice for OS on a standard pedestal gaming PC, even for the time. It had my standard desktop mode, but the PC also came with a remote and a switchable GUI to use the 'TV' mode. I actually hooked up that PC to my TV a couple times just for giggles, but it seemed much more like a novelty than anything else to me. I found out later that particular line of PC was able to be configured with a TV tuner and DVR recorder as PCI add-in cards. Still, it just seemed weird to put those items in a vertical tower.

[@scytob]

My wife still misses the TV experience of media center, we ran it from 2005 through 2017, we then moved to TiVO, we are now on apple TV using channels DVR (it close, but that last version of MCE experience was superb).

[@flipertyjibert]

10:35 was this a thing for the og xbox I thought it was just for the 360 how would this work on the og

[@awsomewe360]

I had a PC with XP Media Center Edition years ago. My Aunt and Uncle bought it to use as an office PC. Thinking back, I have no idea why they did that, but it was fun playing around with it while I had it. I still have the remote and receiver.

[@ichimonjiguy]

I have one of the HP Media Center PC's from 2006. The build quality was excellent. The PC case fits a standard MicroATX motherboard, and is strong and substantial. I keep using the PC case for several of my own PC build's. I can stuff 5, 3.5-in Hard drives and 4, 2.5-in SSD's in the PC case. In the end, the HP Media Center PC became a true media PC with my own modifications. I'm still using it.

[@LoCoNights]

Fantastic video! I installed media center edition, just to stream videos to my Xbox 360. The good old days!

[@bradwicks5438]

I have been a cord cutter for 10 yrs now & I have a self built PC in my living room. I have pinned the Windows magnifier to the taskbar & use it to read the screen from my easy chair, while running the PC with a cordless mouse. This scenario is so perfect that I see no reason to ever do it any other way.

[@刘紫仰]

i always though windows media center was capable something,but i never though it was a whole distribution nice video man subscribed

[@floridaman9968]

I bought XP media center retail and remotes to build multiple machines for me and my friends, was a huge fan, you didn't need to buy a retail machine. There was no driver issue, but there was a standard remote-control design and only certain tuners or MPEG encoders worked. I am such a big fan that I wish there was still a media center addon for Windows.

[@rbergen]

Hang on... Cake albums! I've literally spent decades thinking that I was the only person I was aware of who enjoyed listening to them. Thanks so much for showing that alone!

[@NiPPonD3nZ0]

I've never used MCE specific drivers on WinXP MCE and never had any problems... I have a couple machines with it, one HP and one OEM and never had problems with games or the MCE software with generic XP drivers. Only used the 2005 and newer now that I think about it! Great video...

[@DominatorHDX]

Would've been cool if you also showed the insides of this beast 😉

[@TechTangents]

It's so cramped inside you really can't see anything. It's all completely custom with brackets and ducting all over. It would require a full disassembly on camera to make sense of it but I didn't want to spend that much time on it in the video.

[@JackStavris]

I had an Asus 17" media center laptop with Vista Home Premium back in 2008, and honestly it was brilliant and ran Vista really well, though it did come with a decently powerful Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM & a GeForce 8600GS so that was probably why. What made it a media center laptop was it's inclousion of a external TV tuner & capture card, as well as dedicated media controls on the front of the laptop. It was quite literally a beast of a laptop as it had a big 17" screen and was incredibly heavy, how I managed to carry this thing when I was in high schol at the time was amazing, but somehow I managed.

[@bedrat2223]

I rocked a Media Center PC until windows stopped supporting the guide updates and went to PLEX. I loved Windows Media Center I had a full HD 6 tuner Ceton setup with Xbox 360 and Ceton Echos to watch live TV and all my media in other rooms. I always like the Windows Media center interface and the normal looking remote you could use with an IR receiver. It was said to see Microsoft kill it off, but I can understand why. Guest I'm stuck with PLEX now and I can't remember the last time I watched a TV show. Great video and it brought back some old memories.

[@93ct]

Wow great video. I had built a couple of Windows Media PCs myself. They are somewhere in my junk e-waste storage. I also bought an Acer laptop which had Windows Media Center installed. You could install two of these Hauppage TV capture cards so that you can record on channel whilst watching another. It was so cool then. And I had the exact same keyboard and mouse. It was like a Wii-controller.

[@tristangrice2064]

When I first looked at Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, I thought there was just Professional and Home Edition until I found out in 2016. This was similar to like what our Sony SAT-T60 DIRECTV TiVo had.

[@MarkSynthesis]

Great video! I'd love to see Techmoan take a crack at this too.

[@tomr.knudsen3897]

I just realized long since I seen your cat in your videos... missed her/him, I forget, I think I need to find some of your older video, just seeing your cat going around on your desk while you work... show us more cat in your video please))) So cute watching the printer!!! cat and old tech

[@Ganesh_Sh]

This brings back a lot of memories! The media center was a breath of fresh air in terms of the UI and how it just flowed through the menu. I disagree to the content though 1. I've installed a media center edition on a regular PC. It was a straight install with no issues. 2. There were no driver issues and I used the xp display drivers and all games ran just fine. 3. I used to have a huge collection of ripped dvd's in my system and Medi centre gave this cover flow view which was awesome to browse There was a 3rd party id3 tag editor which used to download and upload titles from IMDb, so the dvd rips looked flawless. Used this for years before I switched to Windows vista ultimate which had media center built in. This was the best Windows xp version. Period!

[@videotape2959]

2:03 What a beautiful setup. Although I prefer older eras of computing, There is a charm to the early 2000's and mid 2000's stuff. I hated the 2000's while I was going through them, but today I realize that it was the last good decade of human civilization. Diskettes were still being made, VCRs too, computing was still fun.

[@akaJughead]

4:22 Hauppauge. Pronounced similar to to hop hog. It's town in Long Island, NY. I used to live there when I was in middle school. Hauppauge Computer Works is headquartered in the town.

[@TheVincentKyle]

I miss the old days of going to CompUSA in Westbury and buying a WinTV tuner....

[@grummpyyounggeek]

Media Center 2005 could technically be bought as an OEM version of Windows, but of course without ANY support from Microsoft. Many retailers asked you to purchase it with other PC parts like a motherboard or hard drive so that you could prove you were genuinely building a PC. The package shipped in a cardboard box complete with the license agreement and your sticker was on the back of the manual with instructions on where to affix it on the PC before shipping. But being a budding Home Theater enthusiast on a budget, MCE gave me years of fun rabbit holes to explore including some lesser known/documented things that Media Center could do. The Hauppage TV cards were also only available as OEM because the drivers were included with MCE. The additional input was done using the onboard header. The guts of the card were the same as the consumer version. The difference was that for the MCE specification they had to include complete s-video and RCA connectors. In comparison, the retail version would rollup the 2x RCA audio jacks into a 3.5mm jack, sometimes the video connectors would also be combined onto a breakout cable of some sort rather than natively on the bracket, and even have a dedicated IR port for the remote control. The MCE version also came with a Media Center remote control and an IR Receiver that connected using a simple USB A -> B cable. The best thing about this? It even had IR blasters and inputs in the box so you could even control an external set-top box using the media center remote. Fun fact - you could also change channels via typing in the keyboard, and Media Center was even clever enough to send that out through the IR blaster! This worked extremelty well, except if your set top box was a slow responder - then media center would "frame" the picture with the EPG of the "new" channel whilst your set-top box is probably still showing the "old" channel, or even half way through changing. Scientic Atlanta boxes from Virgin of this era suffered this especially when I tried this set up. My funniest memory was MSN Messenger/Windows Live Messenger thinking my TV card was actually a webcam. So unless the content was macrovision protected, I could stream a channel to my friends - just without sound and the aspect ratio was all messed up (probably because it was trying to fit a 576i frame into 320x280!!) As for recording radio - I had a simple workaround. The Audigy 2 cards that these media center PCs came with had a loopback intput called "What U Hear" which was Creative's clever way of enabling you to literally record what you heard, regardless of how the sound made its way to the sound card. With Hauppage MCE cards, there were no internal audio cables so I'm guessing it had its own driver of sorts. Speaking of which, the Creative Labs Audigys had that special white pin out to allow OEMs to use Front Panel Headphone/Microphone sockets on the cases. For the rest of us consumers, we had to get a Platinum drive bay and then use the ribbon cable for headphone/microphone connections. In terms of 3rd party decoders for the default Windows Media DVR format, ATI's Radeon X1600 series and newer cards came with hardware transcoder for many formats. One of the biggest pluses was that it could take a Windows Media DVR format and convert it to MP4, which I was then able to watch on my PSP (because 2006). The encoding process was literally "drag the files to the encoder -> wait -> check output". It was very much a background application with barely any GUI to interact with. Also in terms of quality - the final output was just...OK. Sound was heavily compressed and the video couldn't cope with faster scenes. Windows MCE 2005's biggest selling point was its support for High Definition TV. My local electronics retailer used one of these MCE 2005 PCs to simply play back High Definition video samples over DVI distributor. Because the UK/PAL regions were way behind the times of ATSC TV standards, the only way we could even get a whiff of HDTV in 2005/2006 via live TV was to subscribe to a steeply priced Satellite or Cable Subscription which then mandated a set top box with....HDMI and of course HDCP. HDTV OTA was not a thing until Freeview HD or Freesat HD was out but by then (circa 2010) most of us would have probably moved onto Windows 7 and it's Media Center. I was pretty bummed that my Media Center rig never got to flex its HDTV muscles. I also learnt the hard way that when I tried to "force" an install of SP3 onto a Media Center Edition install, I broke it to the point where it got into a state of amnesia. The standard Windows XP screensaver reverted from showing "Media Center Edition" to "Professional" and although the Media Center application remained, it would fail to start telling me unsupported OS. Reinstall from scratch was the only way forward on that one. But, interestingly enough, by "reverting" it back to Professional, the previous capability to join a domain came back. You could start an install of Professional, join the domain, "upgrade" to MCE and remain on the domain. But as soon as you left the domain and rejoined a workgroup, you could not rejoin any domain. So by "breaking it" back to SP3, that was brought back. Although whether you'd want to continue with a frankenstein install of XP on a domain is up for debate! The 2005 MCE came on 2x CD-ROMs and it would install a vanilla SP2. The setup oddly would ask you to put in the first disc, the second disc, and then back to the first disc. Of course these weren't numbered, so I ended up going in circles for a bit. However, you also got a "Rollup 2" disc which added the support for the Xbox extenders. Except you couldn't install that bloody disc until you had actually setup Windows XP MCE and THEN installed the pre-requisite .Net Framework. Which meant another trip to Windows Update site! All these little caveats and oddities forced me to learn how to create a slipstreamed MCE install disc which would not only combine the 2x CDs onto one DVD, but then upon first login would automatically install the .Net Framework packages (in the particular order), then the Rollup 2 package, and then reboot so you could finally use it. Ah, the memories of Windows MCE 2005! Thank you for this trip down memory lane.

[@indianapolisindiana7856]

I still use WMC on my living room HTPC running Windows 10. Although WMC is (sadly) no longer supported by Microsoft, there are some workarounds for installing it and getting the program guide working. WMC is as great now as ever. I use it with my 4 OTA tuners, and I believe it's still the most elegant OTA DVR for a PC. Thanks for the video!

[@JerryTravisSmith]

I love your content Shelby! Keep up the good work!

[@jimfergusondev]

10:28 actually when the Xbox 360 came out it had media center extender built it which made media center a multi room tv distribution. It also supported copy protected HBO etc. I used Media center until 6 months ago to record shows regularly. I started with Windows XP the HPZ555. then moved to a custom pc. windows Vista ultimate, windows 7, Windows 8.1 with Media Center upgrade ($10). We had 5tb of storage for the TV shows. and if you ripped your DVD's to a drive < 1TB media would play them from the HDD so you could use it to access your DVD library. I loved it was nursed it along has far as I could. It passed the wife test with flying colors as a DVR specifically.

[@lpoki8897]

This was such a nostalgia blast when you started talking about ripping media. I've spent so much time correcting tags and setting the right names for files. It was so fiddly and dumb, why do I miss it?

[@rwdplz1]

I had Media Center on a PC in college. It just never worked very well, it was slightly ahead of it's time. I still have some recordings I made with it, including the premiere of the Knight Rider 2008 movie, with local storm warnings.

[@DavidWonn]

Still love the hidden bonus cameo with your cat at the very end! Seems to be a regular in recent vids.

[@oldguy9051]

In 2006 I bought an "Acer Aspire iDea 500" with MCE2005: A sleek looking device that "revolutionized" my TV viewing (still on a CRT back then). It wasn't really a desktop PC like this Gateway but basically a laptop without a screen and it was only half as high... It featured an all-in-one mainboard, an early dual core laptop CPU, 1 GB RAM, two mini-PCI tuner cards, HDMI output, AC5.1, gigabit LAN, a nice VFD, a remote and a wireless keyboard with built-in touchpad. The graphics were supplied by the Intel chipset so it was limited: no triple-A 3D games with that one which was fine with me. It was a dedicated movie & TV machine. I had to modify & repair it over the years, though: - The harddisk was initially a 250 GB drive but I replaced it in several steps up to 2 TB. I put it on rubber feet and fastened it with plastic screws. It then was very quiet. - It's miniature built-in 150 W power supply died twice(!) on me but I could revive it by replacing the caps. It was very cramped inside... I used it from 2006 to 2015 to record many movies, documentaries and a few TV series - some of them never re-broadcasted. To convert the videos & cut out the ads I used "VideoReDo" which was extremely comfy and quick as it only recoded when necessary. The one thing really bothering me was that MCE never had a good way to shut down the system (after all recordings were done, perhaps with a grace period). Instead, Microsoft expected the OEMs to configure Windows to enter a power-saving-mode when "nothing happened for x minutes". Very kludgy! Some Dutch(?) fella then programmed an MCE extension to monitor recordings and shut down the system automatically and the problem was mostly solved. This MCE forum ("Green Button"?) closed a long time ago. When it finally broke down I was in the process of moving so I replaced it later with a PC built from standard parts and with Win 7 and its MCE. As I got HD cable TV with my new flat I needed new tuners anyway and the new LG OLED-TV asked me personally to get HD content... The PC got a case from Silverstone similar to this Gateway but without an VFD and I stuffed it with an Asus mainboard, a modern quadcore with built-in graphics and an SSD for the OS. I then upgraded it with a second SSD to better cut movies and then with a quadruple-tuner TV card (with an SSD one could record 4 programs simulaneously, even while doing other stuff). When I upgraded my main PC this media PC got a quiet Geforce 770 so it's smoother and it can now run (older) games in 1080p. The advantages of having a big case... Where I live there are public broadcast channels in HD that show movies without ads in 720p with ridiculously good quality & Dolby digital sound (5 gigs/hour). As I love older movies I'm very happy with that. I cut them with a HD-capable version of VideoReDo and have more network storage than ever (around 40 TB right now). Like many horders I now have thousands of recordings since 2006 and can watch anything I like when I like it. I have no use for streaming services with movies vanishing from them... And, yes, this system still receives the regular EPG data from Microsoft, although only for the next few days (not 7 or 10 days like before). When Microsoft drops this entirely I will switch over to NextPVR, I think.

[@krumpetwithhoney8567]

Media Center in Vista and Win7 was absolutely the best TV tuner software available. I used it for years