I miss Windows Media Center and TiVo

"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
10/29/2019 at 00:40 • Filed to: None

I switched to Plex a few months back but I’ve noticed some things that are really pissing me off, problems I didn’t have with WMC. Sure, Plex has a ton of features, but right now I’m finding that it can’t handle some of the basic stuff, and as of this moment, doesn’t work at all.

With WMC I could easily skip ahead 30 seconds at a time, but on Plex the buffer is a bit more limited and there are annoying delays if you exceed the buffer . And starting a video in WMC was almost instantaneous, whereas there is another annoying delay with Plex before a program starts playing. WMC didn’t have a problem recording my programs on time and getting all of the episodes, whereas in Plex I’m finding that it sometimes records just one of two showings even if they air in suc cession over the air. Sometimes it won’t record a program even if it is set to do so, but if I delete the pass and recreate it, it works fine. WTF? There are other annoying things that I found that WMC just did better, like getting the date and order of the programs in a logical order. There are also split seconds of dropouts on Plex that I didn’t have with WMC, this despite running Plex on a much more powerful computer.

Today I came home from running errands and saw that a bunch of stuff wasn’t recorded. Not only that, but when I went to watch a program it would start in the middle, and in an episode I had already watched. Again, WTF? I saw that there was a server update available and installed it, but now I can’t even reach the server EVEN WHEN I’M SITTING AT THE CONSOLE OF THE COMPUTER IT’S RUNNING ON! How can I not reach 127.0.0.1 or localhost? Even when I use the IP address of the computer itself I still can’t connect to it. WTF? Reinstalling it multiple times , the solution I found online, didn’t do a damn thing. I just want to watch some frigging TV. Not only do I miss WMC, I’m starting to miss TiVo, which turned to crap after Rovio/Macrovision took them over and lessened the quality of the product.

DISCUSSION (7)

atfsgeoff > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
10/29/2019 at 01:04

Digital media was a lot less expansive and playback less complex 15 years ago when WMC came out. Today there’s a lot more going on at both the OS and media server software level to muck things up, not to mention ever-increasing DRM

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > atfsgeoff
10/29/2019 at 01:31

There seems to be too much emphasis on adding features and capabilities and less emphasis on getting the basics right. This is what killed TiVo IMHO - lots of extraneous stuff was added, but just recording a TV program kind of got forgotten about. Right now I just want something that frigging works and don’t really give a flying fuck about how long the features list is.

Not only am I dealing with this cluster, but I’m having serious challenges getting Windows reinstalled on a laptop with a dying HD, and now Google Home won’t connect with my Nest thermostat. Heck, even the Nest app can’t seem to communicate with the thermostat, saying it’s already connected (hint: it isn’t). Technology was supposed to make our lives simpler, but all of my spare time right now is being occupied trying to get this shit to work and work reliably.

Lots of people are saying ‘eat the rich’, but right now I’m in favor of slaughtering all marketing departments as they are primarily responsible for feature creep and lack of quality. Who cares how something works as long as it has more features than the next guy and was shipped out by a particular irrelevant holiday?

Pardon my ranting, but I’m getting a little frustrated. You’d think that spending years in IT would make this stuff easier, but if this is easy I feel sorry for the poor bastard that is technically challenged...

atfsgeoff > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
10/29/2019 at 01:34

Rule of thumb: Any stationary device that relies solely on wifi to function is garbage.

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > atfsgeoff
10/29/2019 at 07:54

This. One of the primary reasons I like using my ps3 instead of the chrome cast is the wired Internet connection. Chromecast is nice and cool and all but wifi is its Achilles heel.

Nibby > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
10/29/2019 at 08:08

WINDOWS XP MEDIA CENTER EDITION

ChrisinKY > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
10/30/2019 at 09:52

Preach. Ran WMC into the ground, then switched to Tivo about 3 years ago. My house was run by a bad ass WMC PC + a shit ton of extenders.

Now it’s Tivo and lots of Mini’s - but with my kids getting older, and Tivo dropping in ads, I’m done. No renewal next month - time to 100% stream....

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > ChrisinKY
10/30/2019 at 10:30

I was a TiVo user since about 2001 and thus got special promotional pricing, but even that wasn’t enough to keep me around. Now I’m on the streaming bandwagon, except for the Plex server for OTA TV. I had Hulu for a year at the $0.99 price but I don’t watch it often enough to justify keeping it after the promotional price expires. I do use Philo, which at $16/mo is a great deal for cable TV channels and a virtual DVR. Between these and an Apple TV and a smart TV with tons of streaming channels I have more TV than I could ever hope to watch.