AirmanPika Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 OK so I wanted Media Center 2005 installed on my iMac so I started trying to figure out a few things. With the help of several people I managed to edit the slipstream so that it will support MCE2005 (before it would break the install and only install XP SP2 Pro leaving out the MCE parts). Now it works BUT there is one catch. Of course you need to own MCE but you have to burn it onto a DVD. The problem is that at a certain point in the install MCE normally asks for CD2 of MCE (assuming you aren't using a DVD version) but it doesn't eject CD1....and the intel imac doesn't have a manual eject button or pinhole so you are SOL. Only fix to this is to put all the files onto 1 DVD. The rest of the process is the same though and I have tweaked the install guide accordingly. Please note that this is only for MCE2005 and not XP Pro (I hope to figure out other versions later if I get the time). Anyway enjoy and thanks again to Narf and blanka for the good work. MCE2005onmac_0.1.zip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AirmanPika Posted March 17, 2006 Author Share Posted March 17, 2006 I noticed when I first started up Media Center that it said a supported video card was not installed but it worked fine after that. Hopefully we will figure out how to get the IR Port and maybe even the apple remote working with the imac soon. Oh and I have some pics for ya too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Velvet Nightmare Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 Alright, I am highly impressed at this, and amazingly just found a blank DVD in my desk, along with my MCE2005 DVD. I think I'll try it out, if I hear more successes before I get home today. Have you gotten anyone to try it on a MacBook yet? I don't really feel like Guenniea Pigging it, but for the good of the community, I could suck it up and try. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KublaKhan Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 Nice! That's great... I'm not sure if I would spend the money for MCE2005 though... there are so many opensource/freeware solutions that work great and look better than MCE - like MediaPortal. Great Job though! This news just keeps getting better and better! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tdar Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 I'd be interested to know if you plug in the MCE remote recever,would you then have full MCE remote control from a Microsoft remote....the Apple one does not have all of the MCE function on it as it's for Front Row,not MCE. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AirmanPika Posted March 17, 2006 Author Share Posted March 17, 2006 Well as long as the infared is working it should be able to use any remote. Problem is I don't think infared is working yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Exposay Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 http://digg.com/apple/Front_Row_Not_Good_E...E_on_Intel_iMac Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tdar Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 Well as long as the infared is working it should be able to use any remote. Problem is I don't think infared is working yet. I was thinking of the Microsoft MCE IR recever that connects USB....that driver is built-in to XP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FullMetal Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 How good is the video playback? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skyliner34 Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 Nice one. I'm tempted to buy an iMac now Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Lockwood Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 Regarding the fact that MCE install needs to eject disk 1 (and doesn't) in order to read disk 2. What if you use an external USB CD-ROM drive? That would make it possible (if necessary) to manually eject disk 1 and insert disk 2. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gamephreaker Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 does it work on mac mini or macbook pro? does it work on mac mini or macbook pro? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonatj Posted March 18, 2006 Share Posted March 18, 2006 So now the question is, are the ATI X1600 drivers ready and are there any USB TV Tuners that are supported by MCE2K5? jonatj Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
INFNITE Posted March 18, 2006 Share Posted March 18, 2006 So now the question is, are the ATI X1600 drivers ready nope, it's gonna require a good amount of hacking Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stngray Posted March 18, 2006 Share Posted March 18, 2006 So now the question is, are the ATI X1600 drivers ready and are there any USB TV Tuners that are supported by MCE2K5? jonatj Angel makes a USB Tv Tuner that works, dell sells the same thing under their brand for use with laptops. I have one and it works great. http://www.lumanate.com/Htm/LumaMenu.htm?_...m/prdUSBPVR.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BCrowie Posted March 18, 2006 Share Posted March 18, 2006 Were also gonna have to get some video drivers working. When you start media center up and it cant recognize the video card or the video card doesnt have enough video memory (128mb or above) it starts up with no animations... i.e. fade, background movement, highlight glow etc.. also you have to have the video card working to watch dvd's, video's and tv. without the video card working right youre only able to listen to music and look at pictures (and listen to fm radio if you have a fm tuner). hows it going with networking.... is that working? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Velvet Nightmare Posted March 18, 2006 Share Posted March 18, 2006 The drivers for networking can be found on the driver page. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hatoncat Posted March 18, 2006 Share Posted March 18, 2006 I do caution people that you may want to hold off, especially if you already installed XP, from going to MCE 2005. Media Center 2005 video drivers are coded slightly differently to handle the Media Center API. If ATI were to release a UGA driver for XP Pro, there's a good chance it will break with Media Center support. Meaning, you might even have to install XP Pro to get it to work. I'm sure eventually there will be a UGA MCE 2005 driver from ATI, but it may be a long wait and you may be better off with plain old Pro. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AirmanPika Posted March 18, 2006 Author Share Posted March 18, 2006 Its possible but I've never had an issue using regular XP drivers with MCE. Now yes the UGA issue may throw a nice wrench into the works but I guess we won't know till a driver happens. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nextstep Posted March 19, 2006 Share Posted March 19, 2006 Hmm guys if your going to get TV tuners ad run windows xp all the time to record tv well its not worth it. Just buy a PC and use it as your TV server, dont buy an iMac for MCE... First of all the iMac has no screen choice, dont you want to hook it to your HD tv iMac has one internal drive = external clutter iMac has no interal TV tuners = external clutter I got a cheap Dell server, with 2 tuners, 2 250gb drives, www.orb.com to stream tv to Mac and my cell phone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Lockwood Posted March 20, 2006 Share Posted March 20, 2006 Hmm guys if your going to get TV tuners ad run windows xp all the time to record tv well its not worth it. Just buy a PC and use it as your TV server, dont buy an iMac for MCE... First of all the iMac has no screen choice, dont you want to hook it to your HD tv iMac has one internal drive = external clutter iMac has no interal TV tuners = external clutter I got a cheap Dell server, with 2 tuners, 2 250gb drives, www.orb.com to stream tv to Mac and my cell phone. Most people would be considering the Intel Mac mini for this purpose. The Mac mini is actually I believe cheaper than the equivalent Wintel box (an Aopen mini pc) and also considerably quieter than most PCs (important if you are locating it in the family room). So therefore running MCE on a Mac mini does make sense. Regarding a suitable USB TV receiver, for the UK and Europe the following Terratec Cinergy T2 is not only MCE 2005 compatible but also Elgato EyeTV software compatible as well! See http://tven.terratec.net/modules.php?op=mo...article&sid=227 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tom69 Posted January 28, 2007 Share Posted January 28, 2007 Another solution that seems to work for me (Mac Mini Core Duo, OSX 10.4.8, Parallels Desktop Build 3120) is to just click escape when the XP Media Center installation process asks for disk 2. The process then continues with what I expect is an installation without the Media Center. Anyhow, when the installation is ready and you're inside XP you just start the installation all over again, from inside XP (simplest way is to eject and reenter disk 1 into the drive, starting it automatically). When it asks for disk 2 you just eject disk 1 with your mac keyboard, enter disk 2 and the installation continues installing XP with the Media Center. Be aware that the process will ask you to reenter disk 1 when it's done with disk 2. Same procedure! Hope this is helpfull. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ry4n525 Posted October 27, 2007 Share Posted October 27, 2007 I would like to know how you did this with more detail, the instructions included are very vague and I am just not getting this idea of setting the boot image to that boot.iso file. Nero doesn't even recognize it as an iso file. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jumz Posted November 1, 2007 Share Posted November 1, 2007 Google around on a Windows forum called "MSFN" on how to combine the 2 CD's into 1 DVD...I have MCE 2005 on 1 DVD which I installed on my MBP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaycard Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 Interesting topic. But why would you want MCE running on a MAC? The reason I ask is that the mac is already nice for video playback as is. The advantage to MCE is that you can use with a tv tuner and use its DVR capablities.. and the fact that you can stream content to an extender device like the xbox or xbox360. I dont think a tv tuner on a mac would help much with MCE. It would need to be compatible (maybe a USB one?) THEN you would need to hook it up to your cable or satellite to get any nice programming and that requireds the USB based IR sensor & blaster to control the channels. The whole setup seems kinda messy. One cool solution that I came up with is that I setup a "MCE" Server used only for the media center and I stream content to all the pc', macs & xbox in the home & across the net as well. The streaming part to MAC (tv and all) is easy if you use a free service like ORB. (orb.com) ORB definately solved my issues with watching live tv and videos on my macbook. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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