best cheap hardware

I have Windows MCE 2005. I want to know what the cheapest hardware that is supported. Preferably I would like to know the best video adapter because I have a NVIDIA GeForce MX 100/200 card which is appearently not supported because I cant play video with the media center program. I would also like to know a good but cheap tv tuner for antenna and satalite. Thanks.

 

what are your system specs? I know you're running MCE 2005 and I assume you are currently using an AGP card. Do you have a PCE-E slot open?

If you want cheap hardware that gets the job done AND is compatible with MCE 2005 then for a vid card an AGP Radeon 9600 will get the job done. 9600 and up Radeon cards are MCE supported. I believe the 9550 series are also compatible with MCE however I'm not 100% certain. If you have a PCI-E slot open you can get an X300 graphics card which is cheap and has full MCE support. These won't spit out crazy graphics if you're planning on gaming hard however for video support in MCE and good display at a good price they'll do the trick.

In terms of a TV Tuner, there are a few ATi models I think which are compatible with MCE. However I would probably suggest going with the Hauppauge line-up. They go for a decent price and from what I've read/heard they are very good cards to use in MCE.

Hope this helps....good luck!

 

I'm not fully sure what my full specs are but heres what I do know. I have a PCI slot open and I can always just replace my current video card with the new one. I have a SOYO K7VTA Pro with a Via KT133 chipset. My grafics card is up there in my first post^, and I dont know much else because when it was built I didnt know much about computers and therefore I didnt know what was being put in, plus, I forgot where you go in the control panel to find the installed hardware specs.

 

K, heres what i have:
Motherboard: SOYO K7VTA Pro with KT133 chipset
Sound card: built into the motherboard
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce MX 100/200
CPU: 1.1GHz AMD Athlon
RAM: 640MB
OS: Windows Media Center Edition 2005 W/ Service Pack 2
If anyone has any suggestions, please comment. I have already asked on the forums for MaximumPC.

 

whats that for?

 

im confused. is it for checking compatability?

 

my comps hardware is pretty outdated. i dont think anything new(other than a hard drive or 2) has been added for several years.