http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/ Engadget Comments for SSD drives don't help dedicated Windows Media Center PCs much http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/
Could you check and see if it improved Vista Media Center at all? It'd be interesting if Windows 7 really makes such a difference that software can improve without spending more on hardware.]]>Dec 3rd 2009 2:37PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/
I don't know what you mean about "at all." I mean I'm not sure what else I can say other than I didn't notice any appreciable improvement in Media Center. I suppose I should've have mentioned that I don't use media center for playing music or looking at pictures, only watching recorded TV and movies.]]>Dec 3rd 2009 3:23PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/
Actually SSD's will improve lots of things in Windows Media Center like:

1. Trickmode performance - especially when you bring up preview by holding down skip with Windows 7
2. Thumbnail generation in galleries - this is lightning quick even when you have 10,000 albums
3. Cell navigation in the guide
4. Library navigation
5. Scanning through any metadata in the 10' UI]]>Dec 3rd 2009 4:58PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/
But doesn't most of that assume that your media content is on the SSD as well? At 40GB, most of your stuff is going to be on a separate drive that is 100-200x bigger but still a platter-based HD. People won't be recording HDTV or storing music on an SSD in a media center for quite some time.]]>Dec 3rd 2009 5:02PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/
I disagree.
I noticed NO improvements in trick play which is the main thing I was trying to achieve.
I also didn't notice any improvement in navigating the guide.

And I don't even know what navigating meta data means, but I can tell you that looking through my list of recorded TV felt exactly the same.

Now let me be clear. There aren't any SSDs big enough to hold all my recorded TV programs, so of course navigating my recordings didn't get any faster by using an SSD for my system partition. But I did try moving the live TV buffer to the SSD and of course by default the guide data is stored on the system drive and I can tell you that it made no improvements.]]>Dec 3rd 2009 5:02PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/Dec 3rd 2009 10:19PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/
>> But doesn't most of that assume that your media content is on the SSD as well?

No - the user accts and Media Center indices/ image caches are stored on the sys drive. You can browse to the usr dir and see the index file and image cache of all the album art for ex. It's a rather large file, ~500MB or more. So regardless of where you media is, a SSD drive for your sys drive is great for large libraries.]]>Dec 3rd 2009 10:24PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/
I see what you are saying, but have to say I didn't notice any improvement. I'll specifically test for this on both my extenders again and let you know if I make a correction to the post.]]>Dec 4th 2009 8:58AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/
No one has that many movies or mp3s.]]>Dec 9th 2009 10:14AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/Dec 3rd 2009 3:20PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/
Whoever wrote this comment didn't bother to read the post. The review was about a 40GB SSD, no one is going to store many songs on a 40GB drive, nevertheless a "large music library." And as far as my setup, I only use extenders as my Media Center is headless and I can tell you that for watching TV this SSD didn't make any noticeable improvements.]]>Dec 3rd 2009 3:22PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/> Whoever wrote this comment didn't bother to read the post. The review was about a 40GB SSD, no one is going to store many songs on a 40GB drive, nevertheless a "large music library."

@(Unverified) I think you fail to understand how Windows / Media Center works at the OS / user acct / ext level, or did not read the comment totally. All the accts and music (video, ...) indices (and image caches) are stored on the system drive. This is what takes so long to load regardless of where your music is - so yes the large music library would be on a sep media drive, but it's the index file and image cache on the sys drive that is the bottleneck. i.e. a SSD drive is a huge perf improvement for Media Center with large libraries. The ext connect time (360 for ex) is also quite nice. i.e. close to the instant on you'd want - rather than waiting 30 secs to connect.]]>Dec 3rd 2009 10:17PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/Dec 3rd 2009 3:02PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/
I leave my Media Center on 24x7 so improved boot times are of no benefit to me.]]>Dec 3rd 2009 3:24PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/the noise and heat levels are also very important factors]]>Dec 4th 2009 10:54AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/
If you had a media center box in your living room, like I do, you probably won't notice any difference in noise and heat compared to a standard HDD. Even my Sony DirecTivo box had what I would call a "loud" fan on it and I only heard it when it was at night and everything in the house was turned off.]]>Dec 9th 2009 11:13AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/
My Win7MC maxes out at about 60GB of used space because I have any shows I want to keep automatically transfered to my WHS with PP3 in another room.

Give me a 128GB SSD for < $100!]]>Dec 3rd 2009 5:28PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/Dec 4th 2009 9:05AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/
I have a dual tuner HDHomeRun, a USB ATSC tuner, a PCI ATSC tuner and a USB Digital Cable Tuner, and have always used a separate drive for my Recorded TV.]]>Dec 4th 2009 9:08AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/Dec 4th 2009 12:40PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/ssd-drives-dont-help-dedicated-windows-media-center-pcs-much/Dec 4th 2009 3:39PM