🚀 go-pugleaf

"Romeo Rondeau" <eveyone@ease.com> wrote in message
news:F0x7j.6750$4q5.5602@nlpi069.nbdc.sbc.com
> Arny Krueger wrote:
>> "Romeo Rondeau" <eveyone@ease.com> wrote in message
>> news:FAn7j.77129$YL5.8985@newssvr29.news.prodigy.net
>>> Arny Krueger wrote:
>>>> "David B." <brooks.dj@nomail.com> wrote in message
>>>> news:uO0Gx22OIHA.4912@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl
>>>>> Do you even know what Media Center is/does?
>>>>> It's been around for 5 years and is used by many
>>>>> people as a PVR/cable box replacement, does a great
>>>>> job, it's also available in Vista.
>>>> Compared to running any of the PVR software packages
>>>> that are sold with video tuner and capture cards, it
>>>> really doesn't seem to do anything that is terribly
>>>> unique.

>>> It does look cool on an HDTV, and that's what it was
>>> designed to do :-)
>>
>> Yes, but the PVR software/hardware does the same stuff.
>> If you're in the market, ADS cards come with what seems
>> to be the best software.  I picked up a pretty
>> functional HDTV package for XP by ADS from Amazon for
>> about $60.

> I was talking about the interface.

Then we're talking about the same stuff.

>> If you want to expunge what the PVR software does to
>> your system from your system, you just uninstall it. So
>> far I haven't found that it creates any big black holes
>> while installed, other than creating a lot of I/O when
>> you are recording or playing video, or when you are
>> time-shifting.  One other thing is that the third party software that
>> comes with the TV tuner and video capture cards seems to
>> have a fair amount of cross-vendor compatibility. For
>> example, I've inter-operated PVR software and cards from
>> ADS and ATI.
>
> Yeah, it worked through WDM! :-)

Exactly. And WDM seems to be pretty solid.

>> If you run Windows MCE your tuner/capture card needs to
>> provide special software for running with Windows MCE. I've run cards 
>> that came with MCE drivers with other
>> vendor's PVR software. So MCE reduces your options.

> I hate to break it to you Arny, but all of the video
> input and output cards use WDM to communicate and they
> all do it through the OS.

What a concept! ;-)

>  It used to be proprietary (15
> years ago), it's all standard stuff now.

Exactly. This asks the question - why did MCE require all those other 
changes?

> Hell, I once
> hooked up an old analog video camera and a really old ATI
> input card and used it as a webcam in Yahoo IM. I can't
> conceive of any modern capture card NOT providing drivers
> for Windows MCE, as a matter of fact most of the existing
> ones will be supported already by the OS, just like they
> are right now with plain old vanilla Windows XP.

Apparently MCE requires more than just WDM drivers, because the packages I 
see that work both stand-alone and with MCE have a special setup program and 
more code that gets installed for MCE.

> Sure, you'll need custom MCE drivers for enhanced functionality

There you go.

> but the basics are already supported.

Yes, MCE seems to be based on WDM drivers, but it seems to need more.