Page 1 of Media Centres

Does anyone on here have a Media Centre PC ? I`ve been reading reviews and really fancy one, but would like to hear what someone who owns one has to say about them - problems they might have had, what kit they use, what to look out for etc.

Cheers

Wad.

In all honesty Wad you would be just as well getting a system based around XP and then adding your own TV card. The number and variety of TV cards available that suit different budgets is immense .
Allied to this is the simple fact that there are many software packages such as Show Shifter that allow you to view and record FM and TV .
Yes a Media Centre PC seems quite an attractive prospect but you can do the same for quite a bit less price wise.
If you can, post what your basic budget would be and I dare say many members will be able to recommend the components and possibly sources for the same components.

Choagy FFCUK The SPL :)

I got a media center PC. Well i say media center, its not using Windows media center but i built it to be the hub of an entertainment system.

I built it quite a while ago out of a shuttle PC and a Radeon AIW 9200. Ive stuck a DVD writer in it and it does everything I could ever want it to.

I think media center would be OK for straight out of the box useability, but Ive got everything set up with a few different programs which i would think do the job better as they are more specialised than a jack of all trades OS. Took me a while to configure everything to get it exactly how i want, but it was worth it in the end. Very cool.

I also have a XP machine with a TV card which works fine but not all software will work with it. I think Freeview is transmitted in mpeg2TS which I think is slightly different from ordinary mpeg2.

Media Centres record in a strange format called .dvr-ms. Which most software won`t support.

For more infor see www.thegreenbutton.com

Cheers.
This is the sort of thing I`m looking at - Artisan

Check out PCPro etc for the reviews, it really does sound cool. I like the idea of a do it all box under the TV. The main thing about this is its almost silent, a standard PC would be too noisy for me. Don`t really want a PC in my living room either.

Anyone used XP Media Centre ? Again its getting rave reviews, just interested to know what real users thought ?

i am using media center xp on my home-made server setup, but imho it is just as easy to use normal XP. I will go back to it if i can get round to sorting it out :/
The sytem you are looking at looks to be a wast of money IMHO. There is no need to have a fast p4 chip, and a large sata harddrive - i just have a P2 system with a small 60Gb drive (enough for the OS) and then it is networked to a central server which has 2 SATA drives, and houses my mp3 / DivX collection, which then streams to the tv. I use that system to `save` to when pausing tv etc, and have got a fairly decent tv card in the PC.



...look into my eyes

Ta. What sort of TV are you using, do you have a high res plasma or LCD ?