I have a 360 and I would really like to get the HD video streaming capabilitys out of it. Im wondering if my laptop could handle it. Its a 2.6 ghz Celeron powered Compaq Presario 2500 with 768 MB of ram. The main thing I would be doing is streaming video(hopefully HD) off of an external USB hard drive connected to my laptop, and also recording TV with the Tivo like functions on WMC would be nice too. Does anyone have any advice? P.S. I bought the laptop in January 2004
Nope, but thats ok unless it has to have one for WMC. I dont have access to any HD content at this point besides the stuff on my 360 so I would like to be able to get stuff off the internet. I would love to buy a whole new computer but I just cant afford it right now but I have had my eye on this rig: http://reviews.cnet.com/eMachines_T6524/4505-3118_7-31556305.html I was talking to a friend over Xbox Live and he said that it would work fine, I just needed a legit copy of WMC.
depending on what video card your laptop has it WONT support live TV. There is a list. It needs at least a Radeon 9250 or equal. If its just an intel based on board setup with shared memory it will give you an error every time you open it up. Thats fine. It will still let you WATCH videos and listen to music. But it will NOT allow you to record live tv or use the tivo functions. I am running it on a P3 800 laptop with no problems for watching videos and DVD's. I dont think a legit copy will make any difference for what you are trying to do. It is always a good idea to own it anyway. The 360 may have a way to check it out. By the time you are done buying the LAPTOP built parts to make it work with MCE you may as well build a cheap PC. I built a media center PC for less than you paid for your Xbox. Its only a celeronD 2.4 with 764 mb ram, 120gb hdd and a Nvidia 5200. All the parts cost me $550 CDN. It works just fine. The laptop is being used as a MCE extender of sorts.
i went ahead and did it and i am happy for the most part. I do get that error when i open Media Center "your video card ot driver is not compatable with Media Center." Im just wondering if I can record TV when Im not watching it or if I can watch TV on the 360. Do you have any suggestions for a good USB tuner? Oh and by the way the graphics on my PC are handled by a Ati Radeon IGP 345M and this is all I could find on Ati's site: http://www.ati.com/products/radeonigp/rigp340m.html
basically you have on board video handled by ATi. The memory is still shared from the system ram. SO there is nothing you can do to support it. You will NOT be able to run a TV tuner on there no matter what you try or do. Buy a laptop made for mce or build a basic PC designed to run it. This can be done for well under $500 CDN. So somewhere around $400 US. You can even grab a used P3 that runs AT LEAST 1000 mhz and drop a budget ATI 9200 card in it and it will be fully supported for mce. You just need to make sure you have AT LEAST 512 mb of the SD ram in that sucker. Or TV playback will be very choppy even with an onboard mpeg2 encoder. And a video card with on board mpeg2 decoder. Trust me I tried it!
i believe you would need to have an extender device to bridge the connection between the xbox360 and the laptop.. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/extender/default.mspx HOWEVER, you must have a MCE compliant tv tuner card (ie it must have XP MCE drivers, not just XP..) to even run MCE 2005 with tv options... or best bet is a decent HD USB Tv Tuner... but be sure its MCE compliant.. then using mce should be a breeze.. i believe you get a mce type interface on the xbox 360 like on your pc.. i run mce2005 on my htpc w/a 24" widescreen lcd and she looks great! tv is nicely integrated and pvr capabilities are pretty decent.. no intelligent recording, but thats ok... peace seamonkey420 peace
but without a MCE compatible video card it wont matter. It wont play live TV or even give him that option. Even if he is rying to use it as an extender. Because the host PC has to have it running. And when you start it up it will say it does NOT support video playback because the video card is not supported. SO it will dissable the TV and DVD feature even if he has the compatible TV card
Choosing a TV tuner for a MCE PC is a bit easier than just picking any TV tuner out there. The first requirement is that the tuner has official MCE support. You'll need a MCE driver for your tuner to work with the OS, so if one isn't available for the card that you're looking at, then you know to look elsewhere. In other words it's not just any tuner card that will work with MCE ! Here's a few you can look at that are recommended for MCE ATI TV Wonder Elite Hauppauge's WinTV PVR-250 AVerMedia M150 Those cards are approved for use with MCE (( Source :- http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2393 ))
your missing the point! ON board video is NOT supported by MCE!! SO even if he gets a compatile tuner. MCE dissables it when the video c ard doesnt work!
Am not missing the point !! Am shedding some light to people that think that all TV Tuner card are alike !
what you said has already been mentioned! so not only are you just filling this thread up with useless posts. Your also just restating what another member already pointed out. AND the POINT is that he wants to use his laptop as a MCE PC and use his Xbox as the extender hooked up to the TV. His question is "can he do it with his laptop". ANd all you are saying is that if he has a supported TV card that it will work. But that is NOT true. MCE will DISSABLE the tv tuner card even if it is supported because his VIDEO CARD is NOT SUPPORTED!!!! That is the point! And since it costs a LOT of money to replace a Video card in a laptop he may as well go buy a cheap P4 PC and get a TV card and a Cheap video card and end up paying LESS money than he would have for the USB tuner card and upgrading the video on the laptop.
