Media Center 2005 codecs?

Hey all, I picked up XP Media Center 2005 and cobbled together a HTPC. In the new Media Center application, the interface is really slick, and it connects so incredibly easily to the SMB shares on my main PC to stream content. However, I have noticed that it does not seem to use standard directshow filters to play video files. I installed ffdshow, and still none of my mpeg-4 clips will play in the Media Center. I googled around and found some sort of vile homebrew version of "XVid" (as it is called on the offending website) that is (instead of a directshow filter) a "windows media player plugin" or somesuch nonsense. Regardless, I am a little confused regaring how to get this thing working with all my backed up media! Does anyone out there know what the hell microsoft is thinking? :) Thanks! _MiSfit

Well.. a year and a half later, I gave up on MCE2k5, and installed XP Pro with MediaPortal. It's AWESOME. Uses any media player you want, so I can use Media Player Classic with ffdshow and CoreAVC, AC3Filter, and Overlay Mixer. I can play x264 at full NTSC resolution out the S-Video (in proper interlaced mode) with my lowly P3 1 GHz, 512MB, Radeon 7500 AGP, etc. HD is a bit out of the question, but all my SD stuff looks great on our 34" CRT SDTV! I also got one of nice little beasties to control everything with using my existing AV remote. Awesome. I still wonder though, are there any plugins for MCE that would allow viewing MPEG-4 containing AVIs, MKVs etc? I haven't looked in years! ~MiSfit

Interesting. I will admit it's been awhile since I actually tried this. So, the media player in MCE's media center is basically WMP - aka directshow? What about non (microsoft) standard containers like MP4 and MKV? I'm sure Haali's splitter etc would decode it perfectly, but will MCE actually show MP4 / MKV files in the list? ~MiSfit