[bznotins]

I have two XMBC HPTCs right now, both are Windows-based (specs for each in my sig). One on Win7 and the other on Win8.

I'm a pretty big Windows fan. I am also in the "Win 8 doesn't suck" camp, but that's neither here nor there at this point.

The point at which I have arrived, however, is that I'm tired of my wife rolling her eyes every time I have to grab a keyboard and mouse to fix the problem du jour with my two Windows-based HTPCs.

Among the issues:

• Horrible resume from sleep performance (audio not working, skin not responsive, etc)
  
• Windows stealing focus for whatever random and new reason of the day
  
• Myriad of 24p issues (audio delay, framerate stutter) such that I have given-up and run everything at 60hz (I've tried every combination of fullscreen/DXVA/sync/whatever there is)
  
• Win8 refusing to boot to XBMC without hacks/etc
  
• Win7/Win8 refusing to work without a myriad of kluges (HDMIYO, SleepTimer, Event Triggers, blah blah blah)
  

We're at the point that she refuses to use either HTPC if I'm not in the room. She'll even call me from other rooms to get a show running for her. And after months of telling her (and myself) "as soon as I fix XYZ, this will run right", it doesn't. I have lost all credibility on the subject and not only is the WAF at record-lows, the HAF is dropping fast too.

So aside from this post just letting me vent a little steam (thanks), I think I'm ready for OpenELEC. Being a Windows user, is there any functionality I should expect to lose with the switch? My primary uses are:

• Watching BD/DVD ISOs and H.264 MKVs, some DTS-HDMA, mostly AC3 (all streamed from our SMB server)
  
• Viewing photos streamed from our SMB server
  
• Listening to MP3s streamed from our SMB server
  
• BlueCop's ESPN3 addon
  
• Big fan of Aeon's MQ[x] skins
  
• MySQL library sharing
  
• Need Harmony/Flirc support
  
• No need for PVR support
  

I know I'm going to lose my web browser by dropping Windows, as well as my ability to remotely control these HTPCs using TeamViewer. But at this point if the HTPCs can't be used for their primary purpose (XBMC) in an appliance-like fashion, the rest of the functionality is just window-dressing and needs to go.

Thanks for letting me rant a bit and any tips on the switch to OpenELEC would be appreciated.

[art76]

I have my xbmc setup on a Win7 HTPC and other than the sound sometimes not working everything else works pretty much like an appliance and my wife is pretty happy with the setup.

Things to note, if I put the PC to sleep, I kill xbmc as putting it to sleep seemed to cause issues. I can wake the PC with a remote, and simple extra button to spark up XBMC again. Used LM Remote to help with both starting and stopping processes.
I still like to have the browser though so not having sound, which only happens if PC goes on first rather than TV still isn't a big issue for us, just hit Sleep button, xbmc closes, pc goes to sleep, then PC ON button and XBMC button and we're back in business.

I did try and upgrade to Win8 as I found its interface good to use for Netflix or Hulu via a remote but sadly it kept locking up on this hardware so it wasn't to be..

Good luck on your adventure but I still think you could get it sorted out with windowz..

[bznotins]

Good luck on your adventure but I still think you could get it sorted out with windowz..

Thanks, I'm done with Windows for now. It has been months of exactly the types of "tweaks" you note above and I still can't get things to work reliably. Yesterday was the last straw when XMBC lost focus on my Trinity HTPC while also reverting to windowed mode. I got to spend a good 5 minutes in front of the TV with keyboard/mouse while my wife patiently waited (and rolled her eyes when I said I was going to "fix it -- no, really I will" this weekend.

[whitebelly]

The great thing about OpenElec is that it runs nicely off of a usb drive... so you can just try it out on an existing machine and leave the existing OS intact. Give it a try, you might like its sleekness, you may feel it is limited. You may have problems with the ESPN3 addon, If it works on other Linux XBMCs them maybe it will work on OE.

The sleep/wake functionality of OE is pretty good, but is dependent somewhat on your hardware and BIOS.

[digitaltomj]

deff try it out, you can use YUMI to create a multi booting live disk from a usb drive...

I would also recommend Xubuntu which is ubuntu based and has a lot of interface similarities with windows...it even works well with windows (3 of my comps are win 8, and 3 are xubuntu 13.04)

With a multi booting usb you can test the both out or a few more and see which OS works best for you.

PS, my win 8 comps run xbmc 12.2 flawlessly I just use xubuntu cause its free and it works great for older comps as well as new ones.

[bznotins]

The great thing about OpenElec is that it runs nicely off of a usb drive... so you can just try it out on an existing machine and leave the existing OS intact. Give it a try, you might like its sleekness, you may feel it is limited. You may have problems with the ESPN3 addon, If it works on other Linux XBMCs them maybe it will work on OE.

The sleep/wake functionality of OE is pretty good, but is dependent somewhat on your hardware and BIOS.

Going to take this exact approach, I just ordered a speedy 32GB USB3 flash drive from NewEgg. Leave the existing OS intact and just boot from the flash drive for a few weeks. If it works well, then I'll put OE on the SSD and make the switch permanent.

[aptalca]

I have my xbmc setup on a Win7 HTPC and other than the sound sometimes not working everything else works pretty much like an appliance and my wife is pretty happy with the setup.

Things to note, if I put the PC to sleep, I kill xbmc as putting it to sleep seemed to cause issues. I can wake the PC with a remote, and simple extra button to spark up XBMC again. Used LM Remote to help with both starting and stopping processes.
I still like to have the browser though so not having sound, which only happens if PC goes on first rather than TV still isn't a big issue for us, just hit Sleep button, xbmc closes, pc goes to sleep, then PC ON button and XBMC button and we're back in business.

I did try and upgrade to Win8 as I found its interface good to use for Netflix or Hulu via a remote but sadly it kept locking up on this hardware so it wasn't to be..

Good luck on your adventure but I still think you could get it sorted out with windowz..

I didn't modify the sleep procedure, where the box sleeps with xbmc on.

However, I did create a task through windows' task scheduler, where it kills xbmc upon wake, waits a few seconds, and then restarts xbmc.

I have no issues.

Regarding other apps stealing focus, the only app that did that was chrome (for auto updates). I disabled the auto updates in chrome so no more focus related issues.

I tried openelec as well, but it has issues with sleep as well.

Plus, I had sound issues in openelec where the optical output would be suspended after 2 seconds of idle (which is all the time) and it would take a second to unsuspend, meaning if I wait more than two seconds and then push the button, no menu sound comes out.

In windows, the sound still suspends, but it takes over 10 seconds, so I don't notice it as much

So yeah, no platform is perfect, but I am pretty happy with windows

[jhhoffma]

I've tried OpenELEC a couple different times and decided the learning curve with a linux-based system was more than I had patience for. I have 3 dedicated HTPC's, 2 laptop and 2 android tablets all running off a shared MySQL DB.

On my first attempt, I got it configured more or less (after spending an hour trying to figure out how to get my advancedsettings.xml on the dang thing), but the remote mapping was all screwed up. I had my Harmony configured for MCE Keyboard presses and thought it would just work. I guess not. Found that my MCE IR was plugged into a USB3 (intel) port, which probably needed a driver. Tried using a standard USB port...still no dice. Reinstalled OpenELEC running only USB2.0 ports, still couldn't get the IR receiver to work right. ABANDONED PROJECT.

Next attempt was with a low-end (by 2013 standards) HTPC: AMD Athlon X2/AMD 780G-based system. Installed OpenELEC (no USB3 ports to cause a problem), but this system connected to network via wifi (AE3000 USB stick). Couldn't figure out how to install drivers for it and couldn't get the network configured. ABANDONED PROJECT.

Both systems are back using Win7 with XBMC on top. It works just fine without any issues. I use XBMCLauncher to manage sleep/resume process: close XBMC on suspend, start it again on resume. I set XBMC as the shell (no loading Explorer) and only hiccup is adding a 5 sec delay on the wifi machine to give the adapter time to grab the network before trying to load the MySQL DB on my server. Using XBMC as the shell prevents anything loading in the background, and even if you choose to use Explorer as the Windows shell, XBMCLaucher can be set to restore XBMC to focus as you wish.

Unless you like adding remote terminals to the same thing you're doing right now, I'd stay away from OpenELEC. It does some things very well, and when it works for you it works great, but when it doesn't, it's just that much harder to figure out.

That being said, if you are used to Linux, maybe OpenELEC isn't that big of a challenge for you. It was for me, so I'll stick with Windows until an OpenELEC solution is a little more noob-friendly.

[Martijn]

Never used remote terminal for setting up OE.
Just installed it and used the smb:// paths for adding the advancedsettings.xml
No linux knowlegde required

[jhhoffma]

Never used remote terminal for setting up OE.
Just installed it and used the smb:// paths for adding the advancedsettings.xml
No linux knowlegde required

Unless your devices are not installed by default.

And again, it might be simple for some with experience. However, the whole accessing the SMB part to copy over the advancedsettings.xml was totally glossed over in the tutorials I looked at. And since I tried for 2 days to find a simple way to add my wireless adapter to no avail, I went back to windows and have been just as happy as I was before.

[Prof Yaffle]

There's a danger that the OP has wandered into the minefield of Linux/Windows opinion (and experience, to be fair) here. Personally, I use OE, Xubuntu and Windows, and they're all great at what they do - but they're not interchangeable.

Sleep on OE I don't find to be an issue simply because it boots so quickly that I've never tried standby. I don't see anything scary on your wishlist, although there are potentially differences in support for HD audio (for example). I use my OE box with a CEC adapter which makes the whole remote experience pretty much as painless as it can be.

Otherwise, my move from Win7 to OE took a few hours - remove one, rebuild system with the right image, reboot, set up the sources and addons and re-import the library. The only issues I had were because I wanted to mount the NFS drives from within the OS before XBMC starts (I can't even remember why... maybe NFS support wasn't so great in early versions, but I genuinely forget); I fixed this with a startup script that pings my NAS and then mounts the directories when the IP stack comes up. Otherwise, it was just the normal XBMC tweaking of clocks, menus, sources, interlacing, and the like.

[bznotins]

Never used remote terminal for setting up OE.
Just installed it and used the smb:// paths for adding the advancedsettings.xml
No linux knowlegde required

Unless your devices are not installed by default.

And again, it might be simple for some with experience. However, the whole accessing the SMB part to copy over the advancedsettings.xml was totally glossed over in the tutorials I looked at. And since I tried for 2 days to find a simple way to add my wireless adapter to no avail, I went back to windows and have been just as happy as I was before.

I have pretty much zero linux experience, and the appeal of OE is that it could be a plug-and-play type install. If it isn't, then I'll have to decide between the lesser of two evils, both of which will be sent to hades by my wife.

[nickr]

Well the good thing about OE is you can try it without affecting your windows install, but installing to an external USB drive.

[jhhoffma]

Well the good thing about OE is you can try it without affecting your windows install, but installing to an external USB drive.

That is a VERY good point. No harm, no foul.

[jesse003]

I had the same issue with the sleep thing. It turned out I had broken my XBMC somehow with on of the addons. Save your config, uninstall and start from scratch no config or addons installed and you will find that sleep slow issue is gone.