Windows MCE

There is one program that I really like from Microsoft and that is the Media Center. I have been using it since the XP version. For the most part, the XP version is working great after all these years. However, in few areas XP starts to show its ages, and that is in new hardware support and handling.

I have recently got an ATi 4550 card to replace my trouble 8600GT card. This card has HDMI output which should save me from have two cables for carrying video and audio separately. Despite all my attempts, I couldn't get the sound to work as XP would not recognize the HDMI as an output. Since my brother has a similar setup and the sound work well under Windows 7, so I decided to upgrade my XP to Windows 7.

Presto, sound works as it should be plus now I can use my MCE remote to change channels that have successive numbers, e.g. 112. I have this problem for a long time and finally Microsoft has fixed it!!

64Bit Windows 7 MCE and RMVB

While it is generally great to move to 64bit to take advantage of cheap memory, there is an exception. If you are using Windows Media Center to playback RMVB files, you may want to stay put to the 32Bit version as the 64Bit version cannot use the popular 32Bit Real Alternative DirectShow filter to playback RMVB video inside the Media Center. So, if you have lots of videos in RMVB format and you would like to use Windows Media Center to getting round things, you may want to still with 32Bit a bit longer ... at least till the 64Bit version of Real Alternative is available.