I have a computer I've been using as a media center, but I'd like to give it a few new parts to really make it a media center. First major thing is a sound card. I'd like to be able to do surround sound out of my HTPC. With optical out from my TV. I was looking at the Creative Audigy Platinum 2 because it has optical, surround, and controls via remote. For TV tuner I have no idea. I want something that works with Media Center to have Tivo capabilities. And can handle HD. Lastly the remote. I want to be able to control the sound on my pc, tivo stuff, and the TV itself all from one remote. I saw some media center remotes, do those work with TV's too?
Soundcards and remotes I don't know too much about, I use my onboard audio and I have a streamzap remote to control the computer (doesn't turn the tv on/off). Tuners is something I'm more familiar with. Any of the haupagauge TV tuners with built-in mpeg hardware encoders will work on a mediapc. The hardware encoders will do all the video/audio encoding on the tuner card and won't use your CPU. You can have more than 1 of these tuners installed at the same time, each operating independently of the other. I have 4 installed on my mediapc, recording 4 different programs at the same time. The HVR-1600 is a tuner card that is capable of doing HD, you can find them for as low as $60.00. Just make sure you get the right socket for your motherboard (pci or pci-e). Your media software is very important, I use sagetv, but the other good one is beyondtv. Either will make your mediapc TIVO like.
If this is to use with cable, satelite, or FiOS, then there are no tuner cards available that will fit your needs. You will have to get a tuner box with firewire output from the cable/sat/fios company...then get a firewire input card for the PC. The HT OMEGA STRIKER 7.1 has the best sound I have heard from a computer...but it costs $90. Media center remotes do not work on TVs, though some TVs do support control through HDMI, and could theoreticaly work from the media center remote if you played around with it enough. Logitech makes several programmable remotes that will control just about everything...but they are expensive. Onboard MPEG encoders were nice when processors were under 1GHZ, and when TV signals were analog, but modern computers can handle real-time MPEG2 encoding just fine, and digital TV does not need encoding at all...it is already encoded, and only needs to be captured. Many cards with these onboard MPEG encoders run everything (even digital) through the encoder, decreasing the quality of HD recordings while increasing their file sizes. However, most don't notice this since most people buy these cards for Cable/Sat/FiOS...and find out later that they are useless for this, so they never even discover the HD limitations.
