New
#1
Halfway solution for adding Media Center to 10 and other random bits
This hit my thought bubbles this past week because I'm actually trying to figure out a software solution for a Car Entertainment PC I'm building and the ONLY best solution is using Windows Media Center on the ONLY perfect version of Windows, which is 10 of which doesn't have Media Center. Kodi doesn't work that nicely for me nor do the other open source alternatives. Groove Music won't cut it either as I'm planning this CEPC to be like a mobilized HTPC to an extent.
Virtualize it.
By using VMWare Workstation or Player with Unity Mode, it technically can bring back Media Center by using Windows 7 or 8.1 with MC. It does add overhead to the system and I am still trying to figure out how to get a PCI-E based TV tuner to work in the VM (could have sworn I remember VMWare being able to do that a long time ago) as well as the FM tuner.
This has been a project I've long wanted to do of having a Windows based car PC since Windows 7 but that isn't the best OS to use. 8.1 was almost there, but 10 knocks it out of the park with SMS and call capabilities through Cortana as well as awesome speech input that is needed for something like this, among other things. I have the mini-ITX board and the PSU but still need to test those out with this set up. Friggin' a, something so easy became so much more difficult. But nonetheless, I've been tweaking WMC and have the startup sound that I've always wanted to use and it is glorious!
But there you have it! You can get Media Center to work in a VM, although it will require a lot of configuration and ideally 8.1 so you can add a host drive/folder location to the guest and network the drive out and then index it easily.
If Microsoft would have just kept Media Center as an option like they did with 8/8.1, this would have been SOOOO much easier.