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Media Center ships in Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate editions. If you have Home Basic or either of the Business editions, you might wonder whether it's worth the bucks to upgrade.
Media Center draws people in with its incredible interface, its power, its seductive multimedia capabilities, its position as the physical and logistical center of all your audio and visual equipment — and the ability to control all that and more with a remote from across the room. With the Xbox Media Center extender, your game machine can tap into the full Vista Media Center as well.
Here's what Media Center offers that most people want:
- The ability to record TV shows with instant-action replay, easy recording setup via a program guide, and a TV mini-screen that appears just about everywhere you might want it. Best of all, you can copy the recorded TV shows (at least, the ones that aren't protected) to DVD.
- The full spectrum of Windows Media Player capabilities, with a gorgeous user interface, all wide-screen friendly, all accessible via remote.
- A window into Vista's Photo Gallery: one central location for all your photo stuff — transferring pics and videos from a camera, playing videos, ripping and burning CDs and DVDs, leafing through photos, running slide shows, and making prints.
- Internet Explorer on a big screen, controlled by remote.
- All the bells and whistles you would expect from a souped-up PC that's wired for sound and video. If you have good audio or video equipment, you'll want to control it through Media Center.
That said, Media Center isn't for everybody. In particular, it has these drawbacks:
- Bugs: Media Center has gone through more than its fair share of bugs over the years. With deep hooks into Vista, Windows Media Player, Photo Gallery, Internet Explorer, and a half-dozen lesser luminaries in the Windows pantheon, Media Center falls prey to bugs in many of the major Windows applications — and it adds another layer, all by itself. If swatting bugs and rebooting your computer gives you the willies, give Media Center a pass.
- Limitations: Limitations are legion. As of this writing, you can drive a TV screen from your Media Center system, but you can't control another PC. An hour of recorded TV takes up more than a DVD's-worth of space unless you use the "Fair" quality setting.
 | Of course, the biggest limitations center around Digital Rights Management, and they aren't all exclusive to Media Center. If you record your favorite TV show on your Media Center system (in "Fair" quality, of course), can you burn it to DVD and then watch the DVD on a neighbor's DVD player? On another PC? The answers aren't cut-and-dried. If you rip a CD that you bought on your Media Center computer, can you play the tracks on your iPod? Can you play them on the computer in the bedroom? Sure, you can use Media Center (with its direct link to Media Player) to buy music from URGE and other companies that give Microsoft a cut, but if you buy a song from iTunes, can you play it on your Media Center PC? These are tough questions. If they concern you, ask people who own and use Media Center (at, for example, Lockergnome.com) before you buy. |
Windows Media Center (WMC) remains the 800-pound gorilla of the genre: When Comedy Central thinks online, it thinks Media Center, with content that's specifically WMC friendly and adapted to Media Center through and through. The same with NBC and ESPN. Time Warner may be another story, but . . . if you want to stay near the cutting edge of computerized home entertainment content, Media Center is the product of choice.
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