Does WMC use/depend on it's native H.264 Codec?

[Brash]

win 7 now has support for H.264... however, what I want to know is.. does anything use it if I havn't downloaded any movie files? Like TV recording or Live TV veiwing?

I use my WMC to watch tv all the time.. It's my 24/7 DVR.

I ask this because I am thinking of using ffdshow to handle H.264 content but I don't want to ruin any foundation it "MAY" have.. like if it is somehow linked to TV Recording.. I wouldn't want to screw that up. I don't want ffdshow getting in the way of that.
But if their native H.264 codec is just a tacked-on codec that nothing relies on, then I see no harm in having ffdshow taking over it's job for handling the occasional mkv/flv file.

 

[not so gray matter]

You should just create a System Restore point and test it before installing the FFDShow codec. From what I can tell WMC doesn't use the H.264 codec unless you're playing an H.264 video but it's better safe than sorry.

"What type of file format does Windows Media Center use to record television?"

Windows Media Center uses the DVR-MS file format, which is an ASF container with MPEG-2 video and AC-3 audio packaged in a slightly non-standard way. ASF is the same container format used for Microsoft's WMV video files, with the difference being that WMV typically uses WMV video and WMA audio. The files aren't recognized by many other media players and video conversion software frequently fails to convert the files to new formats because it's unrecognized.