Windows 7 as a media center PC using a tv tuner with Vista drivers?

Question

I'd like to take the windows 7 RC and run it as a media center PC to record TV. Assuming my TV tuner has vista drivers will this work?

Answer 1

It should work. There are differences between W7 and vista for the media centre. When I upgraded my media centre to W7, I lost 4 channels, when I rolled back to vista they came back. I tried it three times just to be sure it was a software problem.

I use dual pinnacle USB cards. The bug was logged with Microsoft and it should hopefully be fixed in the RTM release.

The only way to know for sure is to install W7 and try it.

Answer 2

I had no issues with my Media Center. I did a clean install using Avermedia tuners. I had similar issues with channels not coming in, but it appeared that it looked up the channel frequencies for over the air HD signals, rather than scanning. I was able to scan and get the channels to come in fine, but it wasn't without headaches.

On a side note, I do have problems with my ATI video card using HDMI to connect to my TV. I sometimes lose the abillity to control the volume. Other times, when the show is paused, and the screen saver comes on, when I return to the show it displays a dialog about the audio system being unavailable and the audio will be gone. This unsually just requires that I close Media Center, and reopen it to correct the issue.

Answer 3

Yes. Windows 7 uses the same codebase as Vista and shares the same drivers. It should work perfectly.