Vista vs. XP - please post your pros/cons - Page 3

damaster · 2007-12-18, 20:04

Anyone got a good vLite session/configuration for Vista that works well with MP? I know eloo posted one in July 2007, but I was hoping to get something more recent.

Thanks

Lotsofjazz · 2008-03-25, 17:05

I do not agree that Vista boots longer then XP, my experience is the opposite.

The fact is if you have a system that is more or less setup for Vista, it will work better with Vista.. Like dual core processors do work much better under Vista, and if you have a motherboard and graphics card that came out let say within the last two years, it is geared towards Vista, and then it is better to run Vista, because it then uses all the resources and features that are available on your system.

If you have brand new top of the bill hardware and running XP on it, it is a bit of a waste, because half of the features cant be used by XP or not used in the most effective way.

My experience is that Vista works better with HD material and HDTV, it will be a bit smoother when I will install a better Graphics card, since I use the X1250 on board the motherboard, which is not as good as I expected when I bought the motherboard, HW acceleration with HD material is below par. HW acceleration used to be OK with Mpeg2 (SDTV) but at the moment I have lots of troubles with that, I hope that is temporary and will be fixed soon, it used to be OK for about two months. Then all of a sudden last thursday it turned bad, I dont know the source of the problem yet, I have (clean) reinstalled VISTA completely and of course also MP and MP TV server, but no help. I suspect a Vista Update has caused this, because myself I have not changed anything.

Lots

BlackdogZA · 2008-03-26, 22:45

Disadvantages:
- For those of you who use your pc for non HTPC use, Vista bluescreens with Polar heart rate monitor IR devices. No known "cure" as yet

and with respect to boot times, my 4400x2 XP machine boots faster than my quadcore RAID 0 machine. Enough said.

Luke Roberts · 2008-03-27, 08:29

Advantages:

1. With EVR enabled on Vista you can always open an internet browser above Live TV, My Video's etc.
2. Very smooth video with fantastic colors, with EVR enabled
3. Vista does boot like lightning. I have a very fast system (Core 2 Quad, 2GB Ram, fast disks, and most importantly: no bloatware software installed).

Background: I started with Vista ~ 9 months ago, but switched back to XP PRo on this machine, because I could not get codecs and some drivers to run smooth under Vista. I recently freshly installed Vista Ultimate again with a clean driver and minimalistic codec installation and immediately after installation disabled UAC. Since then the system has been rock stable for me. I also disabled Vista Ultimate's mediacentre, as Media Portal does the trick for me.

Now I'm hesistating to go SP1....

Lotsofjazz · 2008-03-27, 17:36

Hi Luke,

I found out how to disable UAC, but how do you do that with the mediacenter?.. I have a hunch the MCE MPEG2 Codecs interfere with the Cyberlink or MPV codec. With Radlight I tried to lower the merit of Microsoft Mpeg2 codecs, but with some, it wont let me (also as administrator. I tried this before disabeling UAC), some are set rediculously high (it has FFFF in it). I will post later which one exactly , I am not at my HTPC right now.

Thanks,

Lots

Luke Roberts · 2008-03-27, 20:07

Hi LotsofJazz,

To disable MCE in vista:
How to Disable (Uninstall and Remove) Windows Media Center in Vista My Digital Life

I used this codec guide:
MEDIAPORTAL - free MediaCenter HTPC Software - simple mediaportal codec guide

I use CoreAVC for x264 HD stuff, and Dscaler for Mpeg stuff. To be quite honest I never even bothered to set merits or check if Windows uses the codecs I want, because I simply use MP for this. In MP you set for each media type which codec it should use.

Hope this helps.

Lotsofjazz · 2008-03-28, 00:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Luke Roberts

Hi LotsofJazz,

To disable MCE in vista:
How to Disable (Uninstall and Remove) Windows Media Center in Vista My Digital Life

I used this codec guide:
MEDIAPORTAL - free MediaCenter HTPC Software - simple mediaportal codec guide

I use CoreAVC for x264 HD stuff, and Dscaler for Mpeg stuff. To be quite honest I never even bothered to set merits or check if Windows uses the codecs I want, because I simply use MP for this. In MP you set for each media type which codec it should use.

Hope this helps.

Thanks about the tips for getting rid of MCE

I have read that codec guide as well, and I set it pretty close to what is said there. BUT, dont be surprized that what you set in Mediaportal is NOT what you get! It happend to me with the audiosettings, Dscaler audio codec was used all the time, where i needed AC3 filer..foundout that the merits of dscaler were way too high and overuled the settings of mediaportal.

Or look at what happens right now, I set Cyberlink Mpeg2 decoder, but it wont play.. I am pretty sure it is because something interferes with it.

Marcusb · 2008-03-28, 03:53

Well I just went to Vista Business on my HTPC a couple of weeks ago.

It takes a fair bit longer to set up Vista with MP, with things like turning off UAC and also setting preferences like power schemes and such. Some of this could be due to the fact that MS moved things around for fun.

My main reasons for going with Vista was for the video quality and also for the better speech engine, since I adore the MyVoice plugin for MP.
I haven't had a lot of luck yet with EVR (but I haven't spent too much time on it) and the voice engine is insane, in that the plugin can't use the engine by itself. Windows listens in the whole time too. For example, if you say the word "Close" then it will close MP. Booyakasha (who made the plugin) is looking at changing the way it accesses the engine to remedy this, but XP was so much simpler. The engine does seem much better at recognising speech though.

I have also noticed MP takes longer to start up than when on XP. Sometimes, while it is starting, there are times when Vista thinks it's not responding and gives me the error message asking if I want to close it. then when MP starts I have to click "NO" to the message so I can use MP.
Also, it seems to sometimes run MP in a window, even when it's full screen and I have to click the background a few times to get rid of the title bar.

All up, I can see potential, but then again it just seems a little more troublesome. I haven't had a lot of time to get used to it and try and fix things so maybe that is why.

Oh and yeah, file copying in Vista takes MUCH longer than in XP so if you are always moving stuff on and off your HTPC then this will be annoying, like when copying SVN versions from the home network to the HTPC client.

SpudR · 2008-03-28, 20:42

I have one HUGE complaint about Vista - the file handling speeds.
Just got a message that says it all:
"Calculating time to recycle 13 BYTES!"
Hmm...

Paranoid Delusion · 2008-03-28, 21:32

Moving 27Gb = 15 days, better go on holiday then, hmm terminal 5 Heathrow, na i'll wait.

2008-03-27, 08:29	#24 (permalink)
Luke Roberts Portal Member Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: IJmuiden Age: 37 Posts: 41 Thanks: 2 Thanked 2 Times in 2 Posts Country: My System	Advantages: 1. With EVR enabled on Vista you can always open an internet browser above Live TV, My Video's etc. 2. Very smooth video with fantastic colors, with EVR enabled 3. Vista does boot like lightning. I have a very fast system (Core 2 Quad, 2GB Ram, fast disks, and most importantly: no bloatware software installed). Background: I started with Vista ~ 9 months ago, but switched back to XP PRo on this machine, because I could not get codecs and some drivers to run smooth under Vista. I recently freshly installed Vista Ultimate again with a clean driver and minimalistic codec installation and immediately after installation disabled UAC. Since then the system has been rock stable for me. I also disabled Vista Ultimate's mediacentre, as Media Portal does the trick for me. Now I'm hesistating to go SP1.... __________________ Yes, I donated to the Media Portal team. It felt good!

2008-03-27, 20:07	#26 (permalink)
Luke Roberts Portal Member Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: IJmuiden Age: 37 Posts: 41 Thanks: 2 Thanked 2 Times in 2 Posts Country: My System	Hi LotsofJazz, To disable MCE in vista: How to Disable (Uninstall and Remove) Windows Media Center in Vista My Digital Life I used this codec guide: MEDIAPORTAL - free MediaCenter HTPC Software - simple mediaportal codec guide I use CoreAVC for x264 HD stuff, and Dscaler for Mpeg stuff. To be quite honest I never even bothered to set merits or check if Windows uses the codecs I want, because I simply use MP for this. In MP you set for each media type which codec it should use. Hope this helps. __________________ Yes, I donated to the Media Portal team. It felt good!

2008-03-28, 21:32	#30 (permalink)
Paranoid Delusion Super Moderator Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Cheshire UK Posts: 6,637 Thanks: 129 Thanked 235 Times in 209 Posts Country: My System	Moving 27Gb = 15 days, better go on holiday then, hmm terminal 5 Heathrow, na i'll wait. __________________ Ray\PD Check your codecs are fine with Filmerit. XP\Vista known issues FOR FULL SUPPORT PLEASE GIVE USER SPECIFICATIONS AND RELEVANT LOG's as per HERE

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2007-12-18, 20:04	#21 (permalink)
damaster Portal Member Join Date: Nov 2007 Posts: 176 Thanks: 2 Thanked 8 Times in 7 Posts Country: My System	Anyone got a good vLite session/configuration for Vista that works well with MP? I know eloo posted one in July 2007, but I was hoping to get something more recent. Thanks

2008-03-25, 17:05	#22 (permalink)
Lotsofjazz Portal Member Join Date: Jan 2008 Age: 43 Posts: 163 Thanks: 2 Thanked 2 Times in 2 Posts Country: My System	I do not agree that Vista boots longer then XP, my experience is the opposite. The fact is if you have a system that is more or less setup for Vista, it will work better with Vista.. Like dual core processors do work much better under Vista, and if you have a motherboard and graphics card that came out let say within the last two years, it is geared towards Vista, and then it is better to run Vista, because it then uses all the resources and features that are available on your system. If you have brand new top of the bill hardware and running XP on it, it is a bit of a waste, because half of the features cant be used by XP or not used in the most effective way. My experience is that Vista works better with HD material and HDTV, it will be a bit smoother when I will install a better Graphics card, since I use the X1250 on board the motherboard, which is not as good as I expected when I bought the motherboard, HW acceleration with HD material is below par. HW acceleration used to be OK with Mpeg2 (SDTV) but at the moment I have lots of troubles with that, I hope that is temporary and will be fixed soon, it used to be OK for about two months. Then all of a sudden last thursday it turned bad, I dont know the source of the problem yet, I have (clean) reinstalled VISTA completely and of course also MP and MP TV server, but no help. I suspect a Vista Update has caused this, because myself I have not changed anything. Lots

2008-03-26, 22:45	#23 (permalink)
BlackdogZA Portal Member Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 12 Thanks: 1 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts Country:	Disadvantages: - For those of you who use your pc for non HTPC use, Vista bluescreens with Polar heart rate monitor IR devices. No known "cure" as yet and with respect to boot times, my 4400x2 XP machine boots faster than my quadcore RAID 0 machine. Enough said.

2008-03-27, 17:36	#25 (permalink)
Lotsofjazz Portal Member Join Date: Jan 2008 Age: 43 Posts: 163 Thanks: 2 Thanked 2 Times in 2 Posts Country: My System	Hi Luke, I found out how to disable UAC, but how do you do that with the mediacenter?.. I have a hunch the MCE MPEG2 Codecs interfere with the Cyberlink or MPV codec. With Radlight I tried to lower the merit of Microsoft Mpeg2 codecs, but with some, it wont let me (also as administrator. I tried this before disabeling UAC), some are set rediculously high (it has FFFF in it). I will post later which one exactly , I am not at my HTPC right now. Thanks, Lots

2008-03-28, 03:53	#28 (permalink)
Marcusb Super Moderator Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Melbourne Posts: 1,936 Thanks: 67 Thanked 28 Times in 28 Posts Country: My System	Well I just went to Vista Business on my HTPC a couple of weeks ago. It takes a fair bit longer to set up Vista with MP, with things like turning off UAC and also setting preferences like power schemes and such. Some of this could be due to the fact that MS moved things around for fun. My main reasons for going with Vista was for the video quality and also for the better speech engine, since I adore the MyVoice plugin for MP. I haven't had a lot of luck yet with EVR (but I haven't spent too much time on it) and the voice engine is insane, in that the plugin can't use the engine by itself. Windows listens in the whole time too. For example, if you say the word "Close" then it will close MP. Booyakasha (who made the plugin) is looking at changing the way it accesses the engine to remedy this, but XP was so much simpler. The engine does seem much better at recognising speech though. I have also noticed MP takes longer to start up than when on XP. Sometimes, while it is starting, there are times when Vista thinks it's not responding and gives me the error message asking if I want to close it. then when MP starts I have to click "NO" to the message so I can use MP. Also, it seems to sometimes run MP in a window, even when it's full screen and I have to click the background a few times to get rid of the title bar. All up, I can see potential, but then again it just seems a little more troublesome. I haven't had a lot of time to get used to it and try and fix things so maybe that is why. Oh and yeah, file copying in Vista takes MUCH longer than in XP so if you are always moving stuff on and off your HTPC then this will be annoying, like when copying SVN versions from the home network to the HTPC client.

2008-03-28, 20:42	#29 (permalink)
SpudR Portal Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Yorkshire Posts: 369 Thanks: 0 Thanked 6 Times in 6 Posts Country: My System	I have one HUGE complaint about Vista - the file handling speeds. Just got a message that says it all: "Calculating time to recycle 13 BYTES!" Hmm...