Wow! Thanks for all the great advice. Now if I could only find a few hours to goof around with all this stuff. Maybe I need to take a weeks vacation to spend some quality time with my TV. God knows we don't see each other enough now that school is back in and I spend most of my evenings driving my kids around. But enough about me. I like the idea of being able to use my DVI input for my HTPC. Thanks again for the info. Networx
Thanks for responses to my previous posts. I don't have time/talent to build from scratch. I am resigned to no cable HDTV recording on the PC, mostly because Microsoft and Time Warner don't want to play nice. While I waited, prices fell and MCE 2005 came out so now here is what I propose to buy from Dell for about $2500, including warranties, 19 in flat panel display, DVD-R drive, wireless router, etc.: Dimension 8400 Media Center, Pentium® 4 Processor 530 with HT Technology (3GHz, 800 FSB) Microsoft® Windows® XP Media Center 2005 Edition Memory: 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz Video Card: 128MB PCI Express™ x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) ATI Radeon™ X800 SE Hard Drive: 160G RAID 1 (2 x 160GB SATA HDDs) Sound Card: Sound Blaster Audigy™2 (D) Card w/Dolby 5.1, and IEEE 1394 capability ATI E-Home Wonder™ TV Tuner with Remote Control Take your best shot before I buy it! Thanks.
Hey man. Sounds like a Rockin' Roll system! I'm jealous. Go to the phone and order it right now. You'll really enjoy it. For someone who doesn't have the talent to build his own system you sure picked out the right parts. You'll especially love the monitor. Dell makes kick ass flat panels. Good luck with it. Cheers, Networx
Why not just buy a Replaytv or Tivo for $100, and forget the Home Media edition and save the extra bucks. With the Replaytv you'll be able to network to your pc and use it's hard drive space and watch movies on both your pc and replaytv.
I've been looking at that. We don't have Tivo or ReplayTV service here in Canada, although Bell/Sympatico offers the same thing. When I can get a Tivo type box that's also a HighDef receiver then I'll think about parting with even more of my cash. I think Rogers Cable offers a unit like that but, of course, they aren't my cable provider. It's all a question of where to spend your money and since I'm already fairly heavely invested in the PC attached to my TV it seems a shame to scrap it and start all over.
There's also a lot of people using the Xbox media center to play movies, music, pictures etc. However, you need a modchip for it and I wasn't able to get mine to work. The best part of my HTPC is my gyration mouse. You can use it in the air or on the coffee table, sofa, or even your carpet. I've even dropped it on my hardwood floor a few times and had it come apart and it still works great after a year. Their keyboard on the other hand is crap.
