Dell Media Center vs WINXP Media Edition vs DVD

Hi,
Baseline.. Inspiron 9300 with winxp/pro installed. No tv card,,, I'm thinking of buying a wireless transmitter, to facilitate sending tv to computer..

Have installed Dell Media experience...

My understanding is winxp media edition just adds tv to this , if you don't have a tv tuner, no advantage to this over Dell Media experience , correct?

I don't even really see what Dell Media experience buys you. If you push the buttons to start it, it basically boots the computer, invokes powerdvd, which you can do manually anyway to watch a movie, or listen to music via winamp, wmp etc.

Where is the added value to this, if you still need the os booted, which makes sense? I'm probably missing something which is why I'm writing in

 

One bump.. anyone with any additional information?

Thank you.

 

Sorry about that. I thought someone would have replied. You are correct about the differences. Dell Media does not support TV, nor does it support local radio stations (it does support XM Radio, but I'm not sure about Sirius).

Another huge difference is that MS Media is actually an OS, where as Dell Media is just software. In addition to dell, there are a few manufacturers that are coping the idea of MS Media and making available on their system (sony includes GigaPocket on their VAIO series). This will probably be happening alot because users want the features of MS Media, but don't want it as an OS.

As for using Dell Media experience, its pretty much just a preference choice. If you are using it for a home stereo, then it might be more beneficial to boot it up and automatically play songs instead of having to do it manually. I use Dell Media for pretty much dvd playback, but as for songs, its pretty much a dressed up windows media player (it even has the same visualizations)

When you push a button to start up Dell Media, it still boots up your OS. Basically, Dell Media works the same as if you put a dvd in and it automatically starts to play. This is essentially what Dell Media does. When you push play, your OS will load, then Dell Media will automatically start. Another little trick to Dell Media is that if you want to start it using the media buttons on the front, you must have Dell's QuickSet running, and it also only supports CyberLink decoders. Sonic's PowerDVD and Nero's dvd playback are not compatible with Dell Media. I know I've probably put more info than you probably ever wanted, but if you need more help, let me know.


~SG~
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Inspiron 9300 || 1.73GHz || 60GB 7200rpm ||1gb DDR2||ATI Radeon X300 64MB || CD/DVD RW || XP Pro