Microsoft Windows XP Media Center 2005 Single Pack - OEM

Reviewed By: on 2/4/2006

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: The media center interface is actually very good. Easy to setup and record your favorite tv shows. Recordings have very good quality. Recordings are copy protected.

Cons: DRM!! way too restrictive. It seems with every update Microsoft adds more and more DRM protection. Digital Rights Management is very buggy. Shows your suppose to be able to watch will suddenly not play anymore giving a message saying this content is restricted!! Very frustrating. Go to microsoft website and they give you the run around on how to fix the problem. All suggested solutions did not work. Would have to reformat just to get the DRM back to normal. Not reinstalling again.

Other Thoughts: Do yourself a favor and use a standalone product for recording tv or any other media. I would suggest sticking to XP home or XP pro.

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If you have an Xbox 360...

Reviewed By: Mad Libs on 2/4/2006

Tech Level: somewhat high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

Pros: I can stream HD content from my PC to my 360 which is the only reason I bought it...

Cons: Its Windows XP and it should be an add on or a service pack, not a seperate OS.

Other Thoughts: Think what I can watch in 1080i ;)

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MCE Owner

Reviewed By: DisabledTrucker on 1/31/2006

Tech Level: high - Ownership: more than 1 year

Pros: I have owned MCE since it was first released back in 2003 and I can't see a real need for this type of operating system, personally I can't think of a single Pro for having it.

Cons: The "Media Center" is lacking very important features, most of the hardware for "Media Center" functionality that's of any worth won't work with this version, DRM is too restrictrive, Only saves PVR files to propeitary codec, I could go on and on... For a "Media Center" operating system, this is going backwards in what MCE started out being, if you can get MCE 2004 go with it instead.

Other Thoughts: Save yourself the headaches, unless you like being dictated to and purchase a good x64 system with XP x64 on it and be done with it, you can do much better with 3rd party software and get a more stable setup that you can copy to litterally any codec without worry about DRM dictations.

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