I’ve put off upgrading my trusty Media Center 2005 box now for quite a while for a variety of reasons. However, since V2 extenders are imminent, and because I snagged some super-cheap copies of Vista Ultimate from the Microsoft Store, I decided now was the time to try Vista Media Center for a while.
(One of the nice things about Windows Home Server is that you can do things like this, safe in the knowledge your old install is only a few clicks away 
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Unfortunately my experiences so far have been largely negative.
The first problem was more of an inconvenience. When upgrading from MCE2005 some Media Center settings are preserved but others, such as the TV setup, are not. This is a little frustrating as it couldn’t have been that hard to implement, and it takes a good 40 minutes edit the channel list to reflect which of your providers ~700 channels you both subscribe to and want to watch. The method of making this selection has not improved since MCE2005 either and is still slow and cumbersome.
In terms of hardware I only came across one problem; the Microsoft IR receiver/blaster that controls our cable boxes would only emit a signal from one bud. After a couple of reboots I ended up uninstalling it via device manager and restarting, whereupon it was recognized as a new device and began working correctly.
The other problems I’m seeing are all performance based.
Under Vista, the Media Center UI frequently becomes laggy and often hangs/pauses for a few seconds. For example if I press Guide on the remote while watching TV there’s a delay of ~5 seconds before it appears. Other areas of the UI can become equally unresponsive at times, which leads to multiple button presses and general frustration.
Another problem is that VMCE’s handling of video thumbnails seems to be very poorly implemented. Our videos are stored on our Windows Home Server, with shortcuts placed in the "Videos" folder on the Media Center, and browsing these folders from within MCE results in the UI hanging for considerable amounts of time.
For example when I opened the folder containing Heroes Season 1, the UI hung for around five minutes while thumbnails were generated for all of the files. This problem never occurred in MCE, nor does it while using Explorer in Vista, so it’s definitely something within the Media Center UI. As far as I can tell the UI spawns a copy of Media Player in the background to generate the thumbnails, but does so in a very unfriendly way. The episodes themselves stream fine (although there’s still no way to fast-forward xvid files) so it’s not a bandwidth issue.
Speaking of thumbnails, I have very mixed feelings over the "Wall of thumbnails" that Vista Media Center uses for the UI in the Music/Video sections. While it looks fantastic it sacrifices usability to do so. The only way to see the title of a video/album is to select it, so although the UI fits more items on each "page" than MCE2005 it can take longer to find the file you’re after. There’s an alternative "List" view which shows the content as a list of names, but you then loose the thumbnail image and looks boring (strangely the ‘list’ option in Recorded TV includes a mini thumbnail, but not so in Music/Videos).
On the flip-side the new UI looks fantastic and is generally better organized than MCE2005, which now looks very dated.
I’d really like to like VMCE but at the moment the experience is far below my MCE2005 install. I’m going to push on with it for a while longer and see what I can do to improve the performance issues, but so far I’m rather underwhelmed 
Hi Andrew,
First of all, thanks for using Windows Media Center.
Second, thanks for providing feedback — we love to hear what customers like / dislike.
Third, a response…
I’ll forward the issues of not preserving the TV settings — I’m not on the TV team and don’t know if this is expected behavior or not. The next time you need to upgrade / clean install I might suggest using something like http://iandixon.co.uk/cs/files/folders/downloads/entry1586.aspx to keep your recordings and settings intact.
I’ll also note the delay in bringing up the guide when I forward to the TV team.
On the topic of Windows Home Server and libraries — Windows Media Center was designed (or rather optimized) to expect the files (not shortcuts) to be local (not on a server) — so some of these performance issues are expected. Is the UI ‘hang’ taking 5 minutes every time you navigate to the Videos folder, or was it a one time thing while generating thumbnails for the first time?
That’s good feedback on the new galleries — it’s a fairly large shock to people when they first use because it’s so different from prior versions. The pivots on those really can speed your usage of the galleries, and most people really dislike the MCE2005 galleries after using the Windows Vista ones for a time period (usually about a week).
Hi Charlie,
Thanks for taking the time to respond. With respect to the performance issues I’ve narrowed them down to a couple of settings in Vista, and the fact that under the Microsoft MPEG decoder older GFX cards don’t support hardware acceleration. I’ll do a follow-up post in a day or two with some suggestions for these settings.
The thumbnail caching problem does cease after the initial navigation, although adding a new file does result in a similar stall. I realize MCE may expect the files to be on a local drive, but I’m not sure whether that’s a reasonable expectation in these days of servers and NAS.
As for the galleries – I love the new look for photos, I like it for music files, and I detest it for videos
Photos and Music have a good degree of recognizability when represented as a single image, AVI files have close to zero. A gallery of video files really needs captions of some sort to make it easy to differentiate between the different files.
I started using Windows Vista about 2 years ago. As a beta tester i was very surprised at its functionality. And as all new software does i found many bugs and issues. even still will SP1 looming around the corner there are still some issues. Vista Media Center works fairly well for me. i havent found any areas that are slow but i do have a few annoyances with vista media center. First is the lack of plug-ins. Sure MCE 2005 will sometimes work but they dont look or feel natural. And all though i know its not entirely microsoft’s fault but where is the Digital Cable for Vista MCE. Sure there the ATI Cable card but unfortunatly you can only buy it from a select few companys. What about all of working class people who refuse to buy a prebuilt system. Its annoying to have to use a cable box or in my case two. And even still there is no HD in this method of madness. And why is there no software that is native to VistaMCE that can be run on a non MCE box to act as an extender. Come on microsoft it cant be that hard. But on the flip side of things VistaMCE seems to be ok, It could just use some TLC.
Andrew,
You’ve said there is an alternative “List” view for the Video thumbnails. Where can I find that?
I’ve just setup Vista Media Center and with 200+ videos I have no idea what any of them are without hovering over them. Thats the one bug/feature that will make me revert back to XP. Bad show Microsoft!
Many thanks in advance
Darran
When in the video gallery press the More Information button on your remote control (or right click with the mouse) and select the list view option.
Charlie, Andrew,
I am also experiencing similar issues. I built two new Media Center PC’s. One for the living room and one for the family room. I also have a Windows Home Server, which I love.
However, the performance of the Media Center PC’s is weak at best. These machines are quad core with 4GB of memory and 2TB of storage in each. They were not cheap, and are not under powered. I am puzzled with them. My wife wants to scrap them as she is fed up with the pauses, and sometimes extremely slow performance of the GUI. I have tried streaming to and from the Media Center PC’s and performance if horrible. Copying files over the network takes forever. I can copy from Windows Home Server or my Wife’s XP Media Center PC in no time. But with the Vista MCE PC’s it is very slow. I have spent many hours tweaking settings per blogs and web site information I have found on the internet, to no avail. Without saying to much on my background, I have been designing PC systems for 17 years now and don’t feel that I am lacking the knowledge to do this right. But, I am very frustrated. Network performanc needs to be addressed, and the something needs to be done about the long stutters and stops when using the GUI. This poblem is more glorified when I use my XBOX 360 as an extender. Thoughts or ideas on improving performance is much appreciated. 
Cheers,
David
Similarly to other posters here, I also have a few problems with usability and performance in vista media centre. I have my video library (mainly avi files) on a network based drive system (Lynksys slug) and access it from 2 separate installs of Vista MC (1 wired, 1 wireless).
On both machines the time taken to display the folders and files is significantly slower that under MCE 2005. As a developer, my guess is that this is directly related to the thumbnail cache functionality and that the lag can be put down to the communication between the c# presentation layer and the video decoding rendering layer. Surprisingly, this problem does not go away after the thumbnails are cached since media centre seems to do a complete refresh of them each time I access a folder. This is true even if I leave media centre alone to chug away and get all the thumbnails until all are fully displayed (can take half an hour sometimes).
What’s needed is an option to turn off thumbnail functionality altogether. My bet would be that the lag issues would disappear if media centre just displayed the file names. This would also be a quick fix for the problem highlighted by others re not being able to see the folder contents easily without hovering over the file. (BTW I’m with Darren – no option for ‘list view’ on i button. Only ‘View Small’ or ‘View Large’. Charlie?)
One other issue I’ve got with Vista Media Centre is the lag on rewind and FF during playback of DVDs, Recorded TV or in the Live TV pause buffer. This feels far more clunky than in MCE2005 and it can be quite tricky to stop at a specific point in the video. It seems to me that that the control of the video render layer and/or it’s responsiveness to the instructions passed to it is at the root of the problem.
Love the look of Vista Media Centre and it’s definitely a step in the right direction. Some simple fixes here and there could make it a real winner. My wish list for the next Vista Media Centre upgrade would include the following.
1. Fix the comms problems associated with thumbnails.
2. ‘List View’ option in video library
3. Video name under thumbnails (if used)
3. Fix the Rewind, FF lag
4. Rewind, FF functionality on avi files
5. Setting in media centre for pause buffer length
6. Allow music library browse by folder as in MCE 2005
7. Enable multiple tuners – mixed digital/analogue including multiple schedules.
I have the same problem with lags in the UI and not being able to stream AVI video using my Xbox 360 as an extender. I have a new quad core HP with 3 gb ram and I’m connected via ethernet. My only guess is that there is some compatibility issue with Vist Media Center and some components in these new PC’s. Could it be the quad core processors? I’m hoping software / driver updates are forthcoming.
Tim
Ive got 2 PCs running vista ultimate. One is a quad core in the living room under the TV. The other is a dual core athlon in my office. I get exactly the same Rewind and FF lag problems on both, so I dont think the quad core processor is the issue.
BTW, I read somewhere that AVI streaming is officially not supported by the XBOX360. I’m guessing MS only loaded it’s only codecs on the 360.
@Charlie Owen
You say you can turn on a list view with the More button or a right click. Is this supposed to work in the video libray?
The only options I get there are small thumbnails or large thumbnails, I have no list view option.
It’s very poor usability, I can’t see which episode is which without selecting a thumbnail.
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@Charlie Owen
Hi,
I have the same problem as Geoff Smith. I have a small and large thumbnail option, but no list option.
Does this have anything to do with Vista Home Premium vs Vista Ultimate? If so, that was a poor decision by Microsoft to split the functionality. (I am on Home Premium)
Vista Media Center sucks big time. I can’t beleive how they can make such an application that just looks good but is totally unusable. Which genius thought of the thumbnails idea and didn’t even think of the consequences. Is it so hard just to add an option to list filenames instead?? Idiots. The amount of time having to wait for thumbnails to display is riddiculous. Every time I start Media Center to watch a movie, I end up on the internet googling for stuff about how to fix things with this lowsy program. Getting a bit tired of it now.
Generating thumbnails over the network is liable to take longer than with local files. Windows Vista SP1 made some good improvements to network performance, particularly file copy operations which may improve the performance here.
The pure List View is available in the Music Library and Recorded TV galleries only — sorry for the confusion. I’ll bubble up the inconsistency to our teams.
Carl gets the award for most mature posting in the history of blog comments.
How come it doesn’t cache the thumbnails? That would at least help!
I might do locally so to clarify I am talking about network folders.
Stephen, I’ve asked some folks on our team where we cache the video thumbnails and will post here when I get an answer.
Hi Charlie,
Thanks for commenting again. I think the main issue is not how long it takes to generate the files, but the fact the UI becomes totally unresponsive during this time.
If you view the same share in Explorer then the thumbnails still take a while to appear but they’re generated on a background thread so the user experience is not interrupted.
MCE2005 just seemed to do this a lot better unfortunately.