Recently while visiting relatives for the holidays I got to play around with Windows Media Center for the first time. It really isn’t much but a clean simple interface for watching “media” on a windows XP system. I personally have always been a fan of Winamp, even though it is owned by AOL, but it is a great platform with tons of options.
So, the idea came to me, that if I virtualized Windows Media Center I could hook up a USB HDTV tuner and map it to the virtual machine. With all the specials at Best Buy this weekend it was really promising, until I actually tried it.
As you can see, from the image it doesn’t support the media center inside of the virtual machine. So I decided not to purchase the HDTV tuner, so there may be ways to get it to work, but it really seems unlikely.
Vista Ultimate Media Center in Virtual PC Form - Not Great
Virtual PC Guy’s WebLog : Windows Media Center 2005 under Virtual PC
Microsoft Announces New Media Center Extenders
Microsoft’s Virtual PC 2004 is now FREE - Does it work from MCE 2002? | Ask MetaFilter
Sources:
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005: Frequently asked questions
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/onthego/default.mspx
http://www.mce-components.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP_Media_Center_Edition
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1741030,00.asp
Buy a copy of Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 OEM
No related posts
April 21st, 2008 at 11:41 pm
I am not sure what version of vmWare workstation you are using, but if you go ahead and install vmware tools (look at the status bar in your screen shot), media center starts up OK. However, you may or may not be able to play video. Photos/Music work OK.
In fact, I am using Vista MC on vmware on macbook. Its all good as long as I dont try video.