Why will Windows Media Player 11 be a requirement?

[BugsBunny]

I'm someone who wants to keep the mediacenter PC clean and thus have deactivated unnecessary services. Why would I need a printer spooler service running on a PC that is used purely as a mediacenter that is not even connected to a network. Having all unnecessary services disabled the advantages are that my system boots up very fast and less memory is used. One minute from pressing power on until the mediaportal screen appears. It's also very stable. Services could have bugs or security holes. Having less enabled is therefore positive.

So I've tried wmp11 once and got quite upset. I've the upnp service disabled. I've got no mobile media players or network devices or any reason to have the upnp service running.
Now each time I started wmp11 it tried to start the upnp service, couldn't do it because it's disabled and gave the following error in the system log:

DCOM got error "The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it. " attempting to start the service upnphost with arguments "" in order to run the server:
{204810B9-73B2-11D4-BF42-00B0D0118B56}

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

This pissed me off quite a bit and I did not find any solution to fix this but not to use wmp11. Why is there no option in wmp11 to disable that??!

As I've read that wmp11 will become a requirement for RC3 and onward maybe someone can clear me up why exactly wmp11 will become a requirement. Does the use of wmp11 fix any major bug in mediaportal?
I would feel really better after I'm cleared up about this, so I don't have the feeling that the wmp11 requirement is just a mood of someone to "piss off" people that hate wmp11 like me - sorry for the rude expression.
If wmp11 is really something useful / necessary for mediaportal then I think I can live with that…

There is also the wmfdist11.exe package that is part of the wmp11 installer, which can be extracted from it. Wouldn't the windows media runtime 11 + wmp10 be enough as a requirement?

[Jeditrav]

I'm curious too - rather 'resistant' to having to install WMP11, to say the least...

[SMa]

Similar thread: You can't be serious: Windows Media Player 11 needed to run MP?

[gxtracker]

Originally Posted by BugsBunny

I'm someone who wants to keep the mediacenter PC clean and thus have deactivated unnecessary services. Why would I need a printer spooler service running on a PC that is used purely as a mediacenter that is not even connected to a network. Having all unnecessary services disabled the advantages are that my system boots up very fast and less memory is used. One minute from pressing power on until the mediaportal screen appears. It's also very stable. Services could have bugs or security holes. Having less enabled is therefore positive.

While this can be true to a small degree, you really are playing with fire when you start manually managing services like that. The print spooler is a perfect example of this; I used to run an RSS program on my HTPC that would format the RSS feeds for my torrent program - and it required the Print Spooler service to be running for it to function properly.

Was that program an example of poor programming? sure, but thats not the point. Sometimes apps have certain dependancies and requirements from the OS that you just cant forsee or control - especially when you consider a program like MediaPortal is so dependant on the underlying OS with its usage of the .NET framework.

Originally Posted by BugsBunny

This pissed me off quite a bit and I did not find any solution to fix this but not to use wmp11. Why is there no option in wmp11 to disable that??!

I know you're using this as an example, but it has nothing to do with MP. I hope you asked the WMP development team this question too...

Originally Posted by BugsBunny

As I've read that wmp11 will become a requirement for RC3 and onward maybe someone can clear me up why exactly wmp11 will become a requirement. Does the use of wmp11 fix any major bug in mediaportal?

I believe that directshow changes and updates can also be released with new WMP iterations, and since MP uses the WMP engine for the playback of video, you'll just have to accept the fact that WMP updates and MP updates work hand-in-hand with each other. This will always be the case until MP has its own built in playback engine.

Originally Posted by BugsBunny

I would feel really better after I'm cleared up about this, so I don't have the feeling that the wmp11 requirement is just a mood of someone to "piss off" people that hate wmp11 like me - sorry for the rude expression.

Somehow I doubt somebody on the development team said to themself "Hey, lets force WMP11 on everyone just to piss them off!" Obviously it was required for a technical reason. Maybe you'll find your answer in the Mantis: MediaPortal Bugtracker or maybe in the changelog.