Planning on setting up a bit of a home theatre setup in the next few months, and considering swapping my current PC hardware over to a HTPC setup as it would be much more fun playing games on the big screen.

Question is does media center handle all games fine, and what are the pros and cons of it as I really dont know much about it.

Other question is with these HDTV vid cards, how exactly do they work? can you view hdtv quality with just a noraml tv aerial or need other hardware

you run media center when you want to play media and quit out to normal windows when you want to play games and normal stuff etc.

First off MCE2005 is identical to xp with media center addons, also imho is better coded seems faster to me on my HTPC then xp pro, secondly you need a BDA Compliant card for it to work, most have BDA Drivers cant go past a Leadtek DTV1000T they are about $75 work great in mce 2005 have one my box never had probs with it, can allways get a twainhead or dvico but dvico cost you $, ps stay away from the compro cards there s***, just get something with a Conexant CX2388X chipset.

EDIT: Think of the hdtv cards as a network card not video capture, they basicly decode digital streams up to 15mbps (potential for wireless internet is huge here) and mux it into a mpeg2 stream, you need at least a 6600 or higher video to decode HD streams, VRM9 Compatible Mpeg 2 Decoder is also needed (Cyberlink PowerDVD 6 Codec works Great) depending on the aerial and what cable you have installed might have problems, if you got Quad Shield RG6 cable runing to your aerial sould be ok, also depending on where you live might need a digtial signal booster these vary in price cheap one set you back $200, Small rabit ear desktop aerial works great with the Leadtek Card, i am using a $800 digital signal booster 12 outlet with Quadshield RG6 get about 99 percent signal strengh and 80 percent quality, with the game's it runs perfect.


last edited by 0z at 15:34:18 14/May/06

OZ is right... According to my MS rep, Windows MCE is half way between home & pro in terms of features. IT just has this big menu system for organising music/movies/pictures/tv and allows you to use a remote.

Its good for media centres, but MS screwed australia by realling not fully supporting DVB-T. They mainly support ATSC which is the American Digital TV standard.

Also, there is no Australian TV guide (At least, I don't think there is) so you have to find your TV listings from somewhere else.

I use a DVICO FusionHDTV Plus, its excellent. I've also used a Twinhan USB thingy (recent model) and it wasn't too bad either. I originally had the old original Twinhan card and it was a piece of s***.

So yeah.

alrite that should help alot, thanks for all that info

i just bought one of these its great.... i have plasma and HD box already once you plug one of these things in u wont need a computer!

http://www.entique.com.au/products.aspx?id=3800

Yeah they look good too, theres another thing very similar to that I'll put in the car with a 7" screen when I get round to putting some audio in. Only reason I want the HTPC setup is for the ocassional game :)

Tit: Can that thing be used on any TV? Non digital Tv's?