Lifehacker MediaCenter Article Fail

[Brent]

Anyone read Lifehacker's feature on Media Center Software today?

http://lifehacker.com/5462275/which-...enter-compared

Give it a read and let me know what you think...

[wrems]

They forgot Sage...

[Brent]

Originally Posted by wrems

They forgot Sage...

true. Really that's only part of what bothers me about the article.

The first quote that I see being very misleading in the article:

"but these are THE 3 MC's that receive ongoing dev & can be installed on the widest number of TV-connected computers"

Really? I wonder how they could say that with a straight face when the 3 programs they included in the comparison were Boxee, XBMC and WMC.

Then I continued reading on and it just got worse. The comments below the post sort of explain why it bothers me so much. Here's a choice comment:

So if I want a media center computer that can work as a DVR through a receiver, do I have to use Windows Media Center?

This was the 2nd comment - a sign of what an average LH reader takes away from the silly "review."

[wrems]

Yeah those struck me too. It seemed like they neglected to mention the DVR capabilities all together... Or, at least they seemed to diminish the significance of recording TV. An all-in-one solution should definitely handle recording as well as playback/streaming. Another thing they didn’t much speak about was extenders and avoiding the more than likely noisy and power hungry HTPC sitting in the living room.

I got the impression from reading this that the HTPC is just a toy that one can play with once in a while rather than what Sage is as far as being the epicenter to bringing all these features and more to every TV/room in the house.

[aflat]

Not only did they forget Sage, but they also forgot MythTV. Those are 2 big players in the MediaCenter world.

[dgeezer]

Well, I have used SageTV for several years and really like it. However, I use Boxee on my client PC for music and movies because it just works. No hacks, no plugins nothing. It gives me Hulu, Last.fm and Pandora without me having to do anything but install the program.

I am running a Nvidia Ion N330 with Windows 7, which will play back Blue Ray rips perfectly in Boxee. I can't for the life of me get sage TV to play back my movies. Yes, I have spent hours. I also hate the music browser in SageTV.

I think sage is the best DVR by far but it still falls short as an all around media player. Besides, like my daughter (10 years old) says "Daddy, I sure do think Boxee is prettier than SageTV."

[Brent]

Originally Posted by dgeezer

I can't for the life of me get sage TV to play back my movies. Yes, I have spent hours.

What kind of movies? It should just work. Add the drive to your SageTV library refresh the library and click on play.


btw, I'm not saying Boxee, XBMC or even WMC is a poor choice. Just that the article was severely lacking.

[dgeezer]

No, I'm not that dense... well almost

It's actually a codec issue. I can't get any h.264 mkv's to play using the native windows 7 decoder. They all play fine in any other media player I've tried including WMP11 and Boxee. I edited the client properties file countless times and finally gave up. That's why we use boxee is to play back movies and music on the pc client in the basement. I may eventually buy another HD200 and kill this problem for good.

In the meantime I wrote a simple script for boxee that lets me browse my recordings from boxee. It's extremely crude and I don't have the time or knowledge to make it much better. I wish I knew enough to write a script to play all my sage recordings in boxee for when the boxee box is released.

[sic0048]

Unless they have edited the article since you posted the OP, I don't think it is as bad as you suggested. They went out of there way to explain that there are many more choices....

We focused on three widely available, and generally popular, media centers for our comparison and review. We're certainly aware there are many alternatives out there, as free software or stand-alone hardware boxes, but these are the three of the most popular media centers, they receive ongoing development, and they can easily be installed on a wide number of TV-connected computers.

While I will accuse them of bad grammer or editing skills - I think it should have read "but these are three of the most popular media centers" - I don't accuse them of trying to purposely mislead people to think those are the only three options.

[MitchSchaft]

It's a horrible article. The guy going through posting after folks ask about Sage is even worse.

[SprDtyF350]

Originally Posted by dgeezer

No, I'm not that dense... well almost

It's actually a codec issue. I can't get any h.264 mkv's to play using the native windows 7 decoder. They all play fine in any other media player I've tried including WMP11 and Boxee. I edited the client properties file countless times and finally gave up. That's why we use boxee is to play back movies and music on the pc client in the basement. I may eventually buy another HD200 and kill this problem for good.

In the meantime I wrote a simple script for boxee that lets me browse my recordings from boxee. It's extremely crude and I don't have the time or knowledge to make it much better. I wish I knew enough to write a script to play all my sage recordings in boxee for when the boxee box is released.

Only thing I added to my Win7 box was the Haali Media Splitter. All my MKV stuff played fine after I did that.

[david1234]

Originally Posted by sic0048

Unless they have edited the article since you posted the OP, I don't think it is as bad as you suggested. They went out of there way to explain that there are many more choices....

I think that was change after the fact- I don't remember that in the article when I read it this morning.

My favorite comment

Common commenters, you can't expect them to discuss every HTPC software out there. MythTV, SageTV, BeyondTV, Got-all-media, GBPVR, MediaPortal, AppleTV etc. They did a decent job and IMO they covered all of the best looking ones out there which is what people are really interested in these days.
Personally, I use MythTV.

In an article title "Which Media Center is Right", I sure can expect them to discuss more than what they did.

Plus, did the venn diagram make sense to anyone?

[lotusvball]

Originally Posted by MitchSchaft

It's a horrible article. The guy going through posting after folks ask about Sage is even worse.

I hear you on that one. I was one of the first to post about them missing sage and he came up with a long rant. It wasn't even worth a follow up.

[wayner]

In my world a Media Center MUST include TV recording capabilities - therefore this review only considers one media center. Am I the only one with that point of view?

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by wayner

In my world a Media Center MUST include TV recording capabilities - therefore this review only considers one media center. Am I the only one with that point of view?

Nope, there were at least two of us. I too had to quibble with their implied definition of Media Center.

[lotusvball]

I really didn't understand the point of the article. They were comparing 3 pieces of software that don't really do the complete same thing. And then left out one of the commercial competitors to MCE.