Seems like it would be possible, even if it means using a resource hack to stop the version check. Has anyone been working on this yet?
Why work on this when Windows 8 pro has all the features of Enterprise and will include Media Center free from 26.October?
Wait is that true? I thought enterprise had certain features that were left out of pro. I use xbmc anyway...
U are right, the following Features are exclusive by the Enterprise edition AppLocker, BrancheCache, DirectAccsess, Windows8-To-Go, RemoteFX in Virtualization, and ability to Side-Loading of WinRT apps without using the Microsoft Store. The only thing which is not supported, is the installation of Media Center. But as said, there are alternatives.
Indeed enterprise would be better, however i have a version of Pro from DreamSpark so i cant really complain for free
You can sideload Metro Apps on Enterprise without getting an extra key. (MS hasn't detailed whether they will charge the standard $99 a year for one for people using Pro). Or what process you will have to go through.
Onky a few, branchcache and direct access spring to mind. Xbmc whilst nice is NOT a replacement for Wmc, as it cannot even do pvr and live tv out of the box. For tuner cards nothing beats WMC.
How exactly did you manage to install the Media Center package on Windows 8 Enterprise (notwithstanding of the fact that it won't start afterwards)? Does it need to be extracted from another edition, or is it already included with the Enterprise edition? The background is this: I'm not interested in the Media Center itself but the DVD/MPEG-2 support brought along by it. Or do you happen to know of an alternate way of activating DVD/MPEG-2 support as the decoder DLL ("msmpeg2vdec.dll") is already there in principle (but only registered for MPEG-1 and H.264, or some such thing)? (No, I don't want to install some third-party codec, and neither do I want to use Windows 8 Pro.)
I prefer MCE on my office computer bc I have a Mediacenter in my entertainment room (Ceton Tuner). I've used XBMC since the "X" stood for X-Box, but I don't think it categorizes and parses all of the metadata from my recordings.
Yes, I had to extract the files from the WMC edition. It's not present in Enterprise. It appears the usage of the MPEG2 decoder is governed by the license policies. Each SKU has its set of licensed settings, such as Code: <sl:policyInt name="msmpeg2vdec-MPEG2VideoDecoderV3InSKU" attributes="override-only">0</sl:policyInt> for the decoder. This value is set to "0" in Professional-ppdlic.xrm-ms, and "1" in ProfessionalWMC-ppdlic.xrm-ms. There has to be some component that performs the actual policy lookups and decides whether to load the MPEG2 decoder or not, but I don't know what that is. Similarly, Media Center is probably going to check for the "MediaCenter-EnabledSku"=1 policy (which is only present in ProfessionalWMC-ppdlic.xrm-ms) and fail startup if that value is not present.
there are also certain other license values. i tried some mixing with licenses but in the end it doesn't really work because of sppsvc checks. I'm not fully aware if MediaCenter-EnabledSku value handles the launch of ehome/wmc, but if it does, than you're screwd. i tried mixing skus but it ended up in losing activation at all. take a look at product policy editor (my idea, but kost programmed id) it let's you edit all values. than you can mix around as much as you want. but spp has to be disabled. i would recommend prowmc edition and import the enterprise features in this build. this would be somehing like all features edition than.