Windows Media Center software?

[NTMBK]

I'm looking to build a gaming and TV watching HTPC (thread here). I'm a bit stumped on what software to use to record and watch live TV, though.

I was just going to use WMC, as that always got good reviews and comes as part of Windows. But now I find out that I need to pay an extra £85 on top of Windows 8.1 just to get the damn thing! That's doubling the total price of my OS! And apparently it doesn't even support Blu-Rays...

Is there a better, more affordable media center software for Windows out there? I'm looking for something which does the following:

• Watches and records Freeview HD television (with full EPG support)
• Supports Windows Media remote controls
• Plays DVDs and Blu Rays (physical discs, not rips!)
• Supports a wide range of video file formats (MP4, AVI, h264, WMV...)
• Has a usable interface - I want to kick back on the sofa with a remote control and channel surf, not keep breaking out the keyboard and mouse to fiddle with tiny menus and enter terminal commands

I know that watching Blu-Rays on PCs is obnoxiously difficult, so I might be willing to drop that requirement- I don't even own any Blu-Rays yet, so I could probably get by with DVDs And if there's no better alternative, I guess I could shell out the £85 for Windows Media Center. I just want to make sure that I'm not missing out on some superior bit of software.

EDIT: And it has to be usable by the girlfriend... So nothing too complex!

 

[corkyg]

Too bad you missed the WMC free feature addition for Win 8 Pro. I recorded my key. When I upgraded to 8.1, WMC went away, but I recovered it as an added feature in Control Panel. And, the Win8 Pro free key still worked. Sorry you didn't get it when it was free.

http://www.howtogeek.com/132462/5-alternatives-to-windows-media-center-on-windows-8/

 

[NTMBK]

Too bad you missed the WMC free feature addition for Win 8 Pro. I recorded my key. When I upgraded to 8.1, WMC went away, but I recovered it as an added feature in Control Panel. And, the Win8 free key still worked. Sorry you didn't get it when it was free.

Yup, gutted I missed out on that! Does it work well under Windows 8?

 

[gitano]

take a look at http://xbmc.org/about/

 

[biostud]

I use DVBviewer. It's €15 and you can get all future updates for free, but it's really good and have lots of mods.

http://www.dvbviewer.com/en/index.php

you can try it for free here:
http://www.dvbviewer.com/en/index.php?page=demo

 

[all4freedom]

I just built a media PC myself and am going through the same considerations.

As mentioned, you have WMC and XMBC which are the big two. There is also PLEX, Media Portal, Boxee and some others.

This is a pretty decent writeup on options and other info about media PCs on this site: http://mymediaexperience.com/top-10-most-popular-media-center-software-for-your-hdtv/

Lifehacker has a lot of good post about media PCs too.

 

[NTMBK]

Thanks for the feedback guys Those are some good suggestions- although I do worry that if anything ever goes wrong then my girlfriend would be too scared to fix them! (I've genuinely had to talk her through how to play a DVD on the XBox before...) I'll take a look at them. I've seen a friend using XBMC before, and it looked pretty swish- it was always breaking for him, but it was generally because his Linux audio driver was flaky as hell.

Do these work with Windows Media remotes, or is it just keyboard cruising?

 

[biostud]

I'm using a MCE remote with dvbviewer.