Windows 7 or wondows 8 on my new HTPC? (1 Viewer)

[hafblade]

You can navigate through modern ui with the cursor keys and start apps with the enter key. If your remote uses these everything should work fine.
I also added some harmony button that presses alt+f4 so that I can close any application or app.
Another cool thing is to add shortcuts for win+1 to win+0 to start application which are in your start bar on the desktop. These also work in modern ui. So you can start specific programs directly with some harmony button.
Another cool thing is to add the "Win" key to your harmony so you can switch between desktop and modern ui with some harmony button press.

At the moment I've got the following:
- My PC starts in modern ui
- Now I can either navigate to MP and press Enter to start it or some button on my harmony which presses Win+1 for me and starts MP
- Further more I've got the possibility with one harmony button press (which emulats "Win") to switch between desktop and modern ui to use apps while mp is open
- Win some "Win+0" mapped key I trigger the standby of my pc. This is done by EventGhost. It shuts down MP and sends the client to standby.
- Further more I added some eventghost logic to switch automatically to modern ui when specific programs (MP, Steam, XBMC, ...) close so I don't have to switch myself.

To do this there was sometimes some trial and error but now I'm really happy with it

 

[mr viggo]

This sounds very cool. I have got a Harmony mce combo here too so there's a few things left to ask..

I have a laptop that came with win7 and an offer to upgrade to win8 pro. I took the offer and have a win8 iso-file with a personal reg key with it. Can I use this license on my htpc instead (removing it from my laptop, of course) or is it locked to a specific hardware or something?

Is win 8.1 some sort of "service pack" for win8 that will come as an automatic windows update like in previous win versions?

 

[HomeY]

Can I use this license on my htpc instead (removing it from my laptop, of course) or is it locked to a specific hardware or something?

Shouldn't be a problem (no guarantee).

Is win 8.1 some sort of "service pack" for win8 that will come as an automatic windows update like in previous win versions?

Yes.

 

[hafblade]

In some normal case it is no problem to use the windows 8 on another pc as far you don't take the license agreement to exactly

 

[Hildebrandt]

I use Win8 - mainly because win7 + dual screen setup doesn't play nice (uneven video playback on secondary screen)... No problem using win8 - is always on, so...

 

[mr viggo]

After a few days of blood, sweat and tears.. I'm finally done tweaking pc, remote and all. Old mobo wouldn't work with win8 regarding sleep/resume so I bought some new parts. Got the cheapo G2030 intel with a new mobo and ram for about £130. Win8 installed fine after phone activation. Must say my htpc is way way much faster now, can even play games when the cpu isn't a bottleneck any more (old one was amd 4850e). Using onboard hdmi for bitstreaming to AVR and dGPU hdmi for video and sound to tv.

 

[GuiltyNL]

Yesterday I have formatted my Mediaportal PC, I was running Windows 8, but had several problems with it:

1) Fan control in Windows 8 was annoying, spinning up too fast and I was not able to change it, tried everything, from BIOS to Speedfan, but it stayed revving up and down too many times.
2) Powerscheduler wasn't working well, I was able to put my system asleep, but after that the Recording Scheduler didn't work. After waking up, I wasn't able to restart the TV-Service aswell. So I had to keep the HTPC on all the time
3) Mediaportal TV Service Configurator had problems with restarting the service too
4) The TV Service was crashing once in a while. So Mediaportal lost its connection
5) Rebooting or waking up from sleep was sometimes the cause of my IR receiver not working anymore. I had to replug it in my USB port to let it work again
6) The temperature of my machine (ASRock CoreHT) was higher in Windows 8 than in Windows 7.

Now I'm back at Windows 7 and everything works again like it should:

1) The fans are quit again and only revving when needed, but the system stays cooler too!
2) Powerscheduler is working again, and wakes my machine up for recordings
3) The TV Service configurator is able to restart the TV service without any problems
4) It is just running for a day on W7 again, but no TV Service crashes
5) Tested the IR receiver several times, it seems to work now without problems
6) The temperature of the machine is much lower now


In my opinion Windows 8 is not yet a stable solution for Mediaportal (in my configuration that is).

 

[hafblade]

Haven't seen any of these problems on Windows 8 before.
I can't understand what Windows 8 changes in terms of fan speeds etc. Perhaps this was some issue with some indexing service in the background process. It works a little bit more on Win8.

I also haven't seen differences with the PowerScheduler between these two Windows versions.

Problems with the TV service are imho tv card driver issues in most cases. Perhaps the drivers of your tv card are others for Win7 and Win8?!?!?!

 

[onelegend]

Win 8 no issues here either

I've used win 7 for a long time, not much between them tbh but media portal is responsive much quicker on resume from sleep under win 8 (responds to remote as soon as screen is visible, win 7 probably about 8 seconds on my build)

 

[GuiltyNL]

I'm working with Anysee E30 adapters and the driver used should be compatible with Windows 7 and Windows 8.

It could also be a problem with the mdapifilter.ax I've registered.

However, the strange thing is that after sleep / resume the Recording scheduling has crashed, but I was still able to watch live TV.