Which does anyone think is better, buying a Media Center PC or customizing one using third party freeware?
No, you misunderstand... Option 1: Buy a new Dell with XP MCE. Option 2: Buy a new Dell running any old OS and customize it with radio and tv tuner, extra big HD, dvd burner, etc.
I wouldnt recommend either really, for the price of a Dell (and a Dell machine WORTH anything), you can buy one hell of a tricked out system with custom parts all ready for LAN parties, Media activites etc... the down side is that you need to build it yourself but it would be the ideal solution. If not, i would recommend option two. It's always better to buy the parts you need rather than be bound by some preset combination (or a limited customization selection).
Dell's customization is not bad, but I'm entirely up to the task of building it myself. My PC would be: 2.8Ghz P4 800MHZ frontside bus 512Mb Ram 80GB HD XP MCE ATI All-in-Wonder Pro w/ remote Sound Blaster Audigy FireWire In Office 2003 Pro
512Mb Ram -- Nothin spectacular 80GB HD -- Nothin spectacular XP MCE -- whooppee Sound Blaster Audigy -- Nothin spectacular FireWire In -- Nothin spectacular Office 2003 Pro -- Totally irrelevent And I'll bet you are payin far too much for it -- also note that this proposed system isnt that much better than what you are running now.
Fair 'nuff but just make sure you dont throw your money away -- and if you really insist -- throw some my way.
Oh well the GRID will be up in few years, so you can let supercomputers do all your encoding, imagine that a 12 pass varibale bit operation 1 hour movie encoded in matter of seconds! --Jokes/ witha touch of reality Anyway has anyone tired shared procesing, i heard that its only really possible on linux and unix os, But i thought XP had Hyper threading? surely you can connect a couple of used (but powerful specs) PC together and do some parrell encoding? any ideas?
You can do that but typically it requires Server and more practically Advanced Server. Another thing entirely, which may be what you are talking about, is networked renderings and such as they do in some of the smaller renderfarms (i.e., basement/highschool). Get a bunch of decent comps, a gigabit net or two, network them all and have them make mince meat of a render job.
I agree, building your own HTPC is much better than buying something prebuilt. I have a Asus A7N8X Deluxe with a AMD 2200+ and 512mb of BuffaloTech DDR400, as well as a Promise FastTrak S150 SX4 SATA Raid Controller, and a Promise SATA150 TX4 SATA Controller, that control 4 WD 250gb SATA HD's and 1 74gb WD Raptor 10k SATA for a main drive, as well as some old drives I converted, and as far as software, I have found Win2k Server to be the best for my needs. _X_X_X_X_X_[small]HTPC: Asus A7N8X-DX - AMD 2200+ 512mb DDR400 1054gb SATA raid ATI Radeon 9000 AIW[/small]
