Long term vision; where does my home setup go from here?

[adam1991]

Security updates are the concern. Though it is directly used less now that we have a 4k TV and my wife uses the Samsung TV apps more for things like youtube, the PC is still a Plex media server, WMC client w/local configured InfiniTV4, and PC gaming box w/Steam + Origin. I'd rather not have a system that my wife, kids, and relatives directly use that isn't getting security fixes and Windows Defender (or whatever they are calling it now) updates.

The answer is simple: take all the non-WMC stuff off the PC, get a new PC for all that stuff, and leave the WMC box alone to be a DVR.

The simple fact is, 7MC is a beautiful DVR. And there's no reason not to use it, and lots of reasons not to use other things.

The alternative is to get a Tivo for DVR duties and be done with it.

Either way, you end up with a modern PC doing all the non-DVR work, and something else as your DVR.

The days of "I will do everything on one PC including all my DVR stuff" are gone.

I guess you could also give up the DVR; there's plenty of content out there to fill the time available for TV watching, and it doesn't have to be stuff that's put out on the traditional grid-based appointment TV channels.

[dpt17]

Thanks for your suggestions. I could relegate the dvr to its own PC w/Win7, it just doesn't make sense for me for a host of other reasons not worth boring you with.

I already have a secondary DVR solution with HDHomeRun DVR + Plex DVR, but it is definitely inferior to WMC at the moment.

In a funny twist, the disk cleanup I tried with Win7 did actually succeed. The instructions for cleaning up Windows Update files are, in short, 'Go into disk cleanup. Go into admin cleanup for system files. Select Windows Update. Do the cleanup. Restart your PC.' I did all of that and on restart there was ZERO space reclaimed. However, when I was using the machine yesterday again, I noticed that 3 GB was now free. My best guess is that a pending Windows Update install that had kept failing due to no disk space, did the clean up Fri night before/after installing the patches. Weird!

[jachin99]

On my home server box I periodically have to empty out out my c\windows\temp folder which is where I believe a lot of that is stored. It grows the three or four times the size of the OS

[adam1991]

I use my 7MC box for exactly nothing else outside of 7MC.

I have turned off Windows Update, and have disabled the update task.

Such is the advantage of moving 7MC to its own box.

[DavidinCT]

Still using WMC daily as a DVR... Well a 2nd DVR (long story, you would be too). I use YouTube on it all the time, and keep a movie collection with over 450 movies and about 30 of them being in 4k...

[dpt17]

I've unfortunately moved on now from WMC, though it's 12 months sooner than I had to (Win7 eol 1/2020).

The final straw was in the aftermath of Thanksgiving. A relative that I visited with at Thanksgiving had some unused Win8.1 Pro license keys. I thought I had found a cheap answer to getting more life out of my HTPCs by upgrading to Win8.1 Pro and punting the Windows EOL problem to 2023. But, my attempts to upgrade one of these PCs to 8.1 ultimately failed because I couldn't buy the $9.99 add on pack to get WMC for Win8-- I didn't realize they stopped selling those in late 2015. The only other way to do it was to, say, put Win8 Home on the machine then buy a Win Pro Upgrade pack. Those were rare, and in the hands of ebay scalpers

With Win8 out of the question, the only place I could go then was Win10 for these PCs. Then again, with all of the TV streaming devices out in the world nowadays, going to Win10 on all of the PCs seemed silly, especially with iffy PC 4k support. So, I've bought a second HDHomeRun Prime, an Nvidia Shield, and an Xbox One S and have retired my InfiniTV 4 PCIe and a bunch of Win7 HTPCs and upgraded another PC to Win10. I am now exclusively a HDHomeRun + Plex shop for both viewing and DVR.

Oh well. It was a good 7 years while it lasted InfiniTV 4 PCIe + WMC + Win7! I'll miss you.

P.S. I am selling lots of PC parts now on ebay as I strip down these retired machines. If you are looking for something in particular, feel free to message me.

[adam1991]

but your rig wasn't going to EOL on 1/2020.

[dpt17]

I'm not sure what you mean. Win7 will stop getting security fixes in 1/2020 (although I realize for some that's not a deal breaker, it's a bridge too far for me). And, I can't buy the $9.99 WMC pack for Win8 anymore. It made more sense to migrate to things that are actively being developed/supported.