2014-08-13, 17:36
I'd been running Windows 7 with Media Center and XBMC on my i3 Haswell NUC for over a year. I hadn't been using it much lately because I have another one in the bedroom and we don't watch much tv in the living room. The other day we decided we wanted to watch a show in the living room and I was thoroughly disappointed in the state of the system. None of it was the fault of the NUC either, at least not the hardware:
Wake the NUC up from sleep, see an error that my system doesn't have enough video memory. WMC loads but without animated menus and will not play video. This is fixed by reloading WMC. It's a known issue with the Windows video driver that the driver tries to initialize while the system is waking up and can't see the graphics memory properly. Annoying.
Netflix plugin for Windows Media Center: Started but errored out when trying to search (the Windows 7 Netflix plugin hasn't been updated for years...doesn't even support multiple users)
Hulu Desktop: terrible playback as always
Hulu addon for XBMC: No longer plays. A little googling showed me it's no longer supported
Amazon Video Plugin for XBMC: Errored out. This one appears to be dead as well.
We resorted to using Chrome to watch a show directly from the website, which worked but was clunky.
I've been increasingly dissatisfied with the Windows HTPC experience. I'm told the Windows 8 Netflix app is much better (and actually updated) but I'm not too keen on paying money for something that was free in the previous versions. About the only advantage of the Windows setup is ease of configuration for live tv setup, but other than football I don't watch or record much live tv anymore. I've decided to rebuild this one like the one in the bedroom (Openelec with the right addons installed) because that one gives me the set top box experience I want.
Wake the NUC up from sleep, see an error that my system doesn't have enough video memory. WMC loads but without animated menus and will not play video. This is fixed by reloading WMC. It's a known issue with the Windows video driver that the driver tries to initialize while the system is waking up and can't see the graphics memory properly. Annoying.
Netflix plugin for Windows Media Center: Started but errored out when trying to search (the Windows 7 Netflix plugin hasn't been updated for years...doesn't even support multiple users)
Hulu Desktop: terrible playback as always
Hulu addon for XBMC: No longer plays. A little googling showed me it's no longer supported
Amazon Video Plugin for XBMC: Errored out. This one appears to be dead as well.
We resorted to using Chrome to watch a show directly from the website, which worked but was clunky.
I've been increasingly dissatisfied with the Windows HTPC experience. I'm told the Windows 8 Netflix app is much better (and actually updated) but I'm not too keen on paying money for something that was free in the previous versions. About the only advantage of the Windows setup is ease of configuration for live tv setup, but other than football I don't watch or record much live tv anymore. I've decided to rebuild this one like the one in the bedroom (Openelec with the right addons installed) because that one gives me the set top box experience I want.
