Does anyone still use WMC in Legacy XP, Vista or Win8?

[JDCorpUSA]

Throughout the years, we have purchased computers and most all were replaced and thrown away except for the original 2005 SONY VAIO VGX-XL1A Digital Living System with Media Center. Personally I think it’s a handsome machine with its minimalist design. Nevermind the specs even when it was new it never lead the pack performance wise. But that’s okay, it compensates for the design. Anyway, it’s still around and in fact I decided to clean install (unfortunate decision) it in Windows 8.1 Pro with fully functional and licensed Media Center. With some upgrades including 6TB SSD, internal front-loading bluray, 6MB memory ram, a newer NVidia GEForce graphics, ATSC TV-FM tuner and of course its original VGP-XL1b DVD-CD changer (I have 2 since SONY gave us a coupon for DVDCD changer when we purchased a VAIO PGP tower PC when the VGX-XL1a was discontinued). We have several PC and laptops we normally use for both home and work but this VAIO sits inside the entertainment cabinet along with our surround system and still do its job. With its recent insurrection, 40,000+ music mp3/wma, mp4 music videos, 1000+ digitized movies and tons of pictures reside inside. Of course not to mention the 400 DVD changer its hosting all for nostalgia since we all know DVDs are obsolete. We have other modern devices that replace what this VAIO can do and more but for the simplicity and beauty as long as it can still do its job, it stays.

[mercalia]

I think many do here. I am certainly one of them. The old intel Core duo/quad socket 775 pcs were and still are useful bits of kit. Windows 8.1 is better than 7 - it seems to handle eg 8TB harddrives better than Windows 7. Windows 7 can start to choke on such large drives if you have lots of small files ( though chaging the cluster size to 64k from the default 4k may help)- I have found Window 7 then takes an age to boot up. Further more when Media Center is running a Win7 machine can seize up when copying to it files over a network. Windows 8.1 is better. Probably the best addon for Media Center was Media Browser that turns it into a different type of machine?


I dont think XP Media Center is worth the bother. I used to have an all in one XP Media Center made by Elonex that was beautiful to behold and weighed a ton. dumped it this year, does not seem to pick up UK Freeview TV now whereas The 7/8.1 work fine

[Kenneth Burns]

Still going strong on Windows 8.1. The end is feeling closer as more and more good content goes from cable to streaming, but I'm not there yet.

[kid.lazer]

No. For me, it's not worth keeping an old system alive considering the effort, security, and usability. I don't have any stand-alone systems and all my HTPC rigs also double as modern gaming systems. Being on modern, powerful hardware and OS's (in this case Windows 11) is best for gaming, and WMC still works great. I even have a built-in slim Blu-ray RW drive, so there are no compromises on old disc-based media either.

[guho]

Yes, my HTPC is still on Windows 8.1 Pro x64, so I can use WMC to watch & record premium FIOS cable TV on my HDHomeRun Prime network tuners. I am running into issues because I have my security cameras on the same server and that software has dropped support for Windows 8.1 so I can't stay up to date and am stuck with the latest version that still allows use on Windows 8.1. The same for the latest Plex server version, which now also requires Windows 10 or better. So over time I will get squeezed to upgrade more and more.

I would like to add that WMC is very old, but still produces buttery smooth TV video with no dropped frames or jerky video. Better than the HDHomeRun app for instance.