Comparing Windows and Linux as a Media center

Im wondering if anyone has any ideas on what I can do for this. I have a project to compare the Windows OS and Linux OS as a media center. Topics discussed will be, applications used, compatability (programs supported), hardware compatability (video cards, sound cards supported etc), video/audio file formats and their usage and compatability, which is easier and better, gaming in both the Linux and Windows enviroment, performance wise, will show off different programs in both Windows and Linux, compare features and ease of use and come to a conclusion on which OS is better to be used for a Entertainment/Media user.

Not looking for answers here, just if anyone has any ideas on what to talk about.

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Originally Posted by SenorDingDong

...which is easier and better...

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Word of advice, make sure you have very well-defined criteria for what you call "easier" and what you call "better" (and that you make these public), as those are terms that have a very broad range of interpretation. ;)

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Originally Posted by SenorDingDong

I have a project to compare the Windows OS and Linux OS as a media center. Topics discussed will be, applications used, compatability (programs supported), hardware compatability (video cards, sound cards supported etc), video/audio file formats and their usage and compatability, which is easier and better, gaming in both the Linux and Windows enviroment, performance wise, will show off different programs in both Windows and Linux, compare features and ease of use and come to a conclusion on which OS is better to be used for a Entertainment/Media user.

Not looking for answers here, just if anyone has any ideas on what to talk about.

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Really, its up to you to define the level that you are looking for. IMHO Linux excells in the professional $$ level (better than MS-Windows packages) for professional film studios and such. Those Linux packages are also far beyond the limited free open source Linux multimedia, that people who hang out in forums like linuxforms.org tend to use.

And on the other hand Linux is very much a poor 2nd to Windows in the less expensive to free multimedia areas, that is within the means of the average citizen. ... Of course any such statement, such that I just made, will be bound to attract all sorts of criticism.

In case you haven't seen it, check out:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Linux_in_film_production

thanks that helped quite a bit, got any more sites with info like that

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Originally Posted by SenorDingDong

thanks that helped quite a bit, got any more sites with info like that

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Actually, the reverse is true, as I am curious to learn from you.

I'm curious to read what your views are, after your research, with respect to comparing the Windows OS and Linux OS as a media center.

mplayer is an awsome media player, and apparently xine is two. they are capable of playing just about every media file, which is more than what mediaplayer, quicktime, realplayer. however, its also a little... well... um...illeagalish to use the copyrighted file formats. so you will have to take into consideration the legality of the media player, wich linux sucks at. exept for the realplayer for linux, wich of course excels in that.

http://revision3.com/systm/mythtv/

Download: http://revision3.com/systm/mythtv/media

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Originally Posted by oldcpu

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Originally Posted by SenorDingDong

thanks that helped quite a bit, got any more sites with info like that

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Actually, the reverse is true, as I am curious to learn from you.

I'm curious to read what your views are, after your research, with respect to comparing the Windows OS and Linux OS as a media center.

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I'm still curious to read what you have discovered so far. Any interesting links to offer, or is this a one-way information street?

Here is another link from the "linux world", in this case a guide on Doom9 of DVD specific multimedia applications (linux audio/video faq) for linux. Of course these are on the non-professional "freeware" side of the Linux "house".
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=91894

i suppose we should be adding our two cents to this, so i'll add mine:

in my experience with windows, WMP doesn't play all the file formats that you want. it is also limited in what it can rip to (mp3 and wma for music). if you want to rip to more formats you need a different media player (realplayer was my first experience outside WMP). even then you are limited. many media players force you to cough up for the full versions, otherwise you are stuck with crippled freeware. the windows media centre edition is supposed to make media playing easy. unfortunately it is fussy about the hardware it uses, which does the "hardware compatibility" crowd no favours.

linux on the other hand, has good media capabilities. mplayer and xine are excellent at playing movie formats, and xmms is second to none for music playing. mplayer boasts the ability to play far more movie formats the WMP can. many may point out the lack of mp3 ripping capabililties, but you can easily download LAME, and iirc many distros come with mp3 rippage out of the box. ogg is a better music format anyway :p. since many of the necessary media tools come out of the box for the mainstream distros (SuSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc) i think that linux has better media capabilities than windows.

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Originally Posted by d38dm8nw81k1ng

since many of the necessary media tools come out of the box for the mainstream distros (SuSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc) i think that linux has better media capabilities than windows.

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I would agree that one can easily get great video/audio playback capabilities with Linux, superior and/or the equivalent of the Windows packages.

But video editing/athoring is a different kettle of fish, and in the non-professional application area, I believe Windows applications to have a substantial lead over the freeware/GPL Linux packages.