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Ryan · Guest

ok im not sure if this is the correct place to post this, so please forgive
me if it isnt.

i havent got a media center pc yet but i was thinking of getting one

but before i spent hundreds i would like to know what the picture quality is
like when your watching live tv and if this depends on the tv tuner? could
someone upload a screanshot or something to a site so i could have a look at
it. or could someone please tell me what it is like comparable to a normal
television?

Also if i have a set top box for NTL can i watch chanels and use a chanel
guide too.. and would the ntl chanels be seperately added to the tuner card
(like all other individual analogue chanels) instead of having to use the ntl
set top box remote controll?

In other words is it better than normal television?

Id really appreciate it if someone could reply as im really eager to get one
of these! they seem great! especially being able to use messenger while
watching television!!!
if anyone can post any links to good sites about it id really appreciate it!

Thank You

Ryan

Adrian · Guest

The quality of the picture will depend on your tuner card, graphics card,
aerial and screen. If you have decent models then the picture quality is as
good as any normal TV but not quite as good as an LCD TV. I do not know
about NTL boxes. I bought the freeview version of media center. As far as i
know they are added to MCE for use with the MCE control.

Ryan · Guest

ah ok cool that helps, is there any tv tuner you would recomend me to look
out for? or if i decide to get it custom made is there a particular one i
should chose that would give me good quality? it would have to be available
in the uk, i heard the hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150/250/350 are ok, but i dont
know this for sure. And also would an ati radeon 9800 be ok, or would i need
a better grfx card?

thanks for your reply Adrian

-Ryan

"Adrian" wrote:

Guest · Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2005 9:18 am Post subject: Re: MCE

As Adrian said, the quality of your picture depends on the tuner card,
video source or strength of over the air signal of TV, screen
resolution of your monitor, and graphics card.

I built my own MCE 2005 box that includes a Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250MCE
tuner card for standard definition TV and radio, and an ATI HDTV Wonder
for high definition TV. MCE 2005 supports two tuner cards. Although in
a non-MCE environment (WinXP) the HDTV Wonder will produce SDTV as well
as HDTV, in MCE it will only do HDTV, not SDTV, which is the reason for
the WinTV tuner.

I have a Radeon 9800 Pro in my box. Anything later than a Radeon 9500
will do. In fact, Microsoft recommends only to use graphics cards that
support DirectX 9.0.

Note that there are Hauppauge WinTV PVR tuners especially designed for
MCE, hence the MCE designation in the model name.

For recording TV, TIVO like video on demand functionality, and video
processing generally, you need a fairly recent processor. Microsoft
recommends an AMD Athlon 64 based system.

Ryan · Guest

Thanks for the reply geekfunk,

as im in the uk HDTV isnt an option for me (i dont think) so image quality
will not be as good. im using an ntl set top box therfore i wouldnt be able
to use 2 tuner cards as this would require a subscription with them.

what is the difference between a are Hauppauge WinTV PVR and the MCE
version? Will the standard winTV PVR card work on media center still? because
im finding it difficult in getting a MCE version in the UK.

im not sure what SDTV is- but from my guesses its standard deffinition TV?
I would have to convert my STB's digital output to Analogue (tv tuner) and
back to digital again for my TV (or so im told) so i will most likely lose a
lot of quality but im looking in to a better way of doing this.

Incase something goes wrong with my MCE computer is it possible to reinstall
the WMCE again without violating the T&C etc?

how does this setup seem?

AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (64 if i can afford the xtra for the motherboard)
512GB RAM (i can always upgrade)
250GB Maxtor HD (Is IDE ok? or SATA?)
Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 (MCE version if i can find one)
ATI Radeon 9800
sound card (i havent looked into yet)
16X DVD RW

it seems quite expensive to me so i might have to cut back somewhere!

thanks again for the replies i appreciate it!

Adrian · Guest

I have a ATI Radeon 9800XT and a blackgold tuner card and they have worked
together (in the UK) well with no problems.

You can easily return your computer to your manufacturing defaults if needed
- its simple but you will lose any data. Is this what you mean. System
Restore can easily take you back to when there was no problem anyway.

Nigel Barker · Guest

On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 16:27:02 -0800, Adrian <Adrian@discussions.microsoft.com>
wrote:

Ryan · Guest

Its not possible for me to get a DVB-T as it wouldnt allow me to watch ntl.
Does DVB-T give me all the freeview channels? do i just connect my aerial to
it?

Nigel Barker · Guest

bOn Sun, 23 Jan 2005 06:47:02 -0800, "Ryan" <Ryan@discussions.microsoft.com>
wrote:

Adrian · Guest

You only have to plug in the aerial to the DVB-T card to receive freeview

Ryan · Guest

ah ok thanks adrian thats great. might scrap my NTL and get freeview i dont
watch tv that much anyway. i might get nagged at by my sister for not having
e4 though so hope it comes free to air soon!! thanks guys youv been a lot of
help to me :)

-Ryan

GeekFunk · Guest

Ryan

Sorry for my presumptive jingoism. I'm unduly enfluenced by our
President; I hope I can get over it.

Hauppauge designed a special verision of the WinTV PvR 150, 250, and
500 for Windows XP Media Center 2005, and added the MCE designation.
It's mostly a marketing tactic, but the special tuner integrates
seemlessly into the WinMCE shell. When you do the Live TV thing from
within MCE, you had no clue as to underlying TV tuner brand.

Generally, when you move out of the MCE shell to the regular WinXP
desktop, you can't get to the WinTV application unless you especially
install it. In other words, you won't have Hauppauge's WinTV 2000 tuner
software for TV viewing from the desktop.

I suspect that you are in the PAL environment instead of the NTSC,
which is USA. I think that there is a PAL verions of the WinTV PVR
250MCE. FYI, the 250MCE comes with a radio tuner. The 500MCE has two
tuners.

Yes, SDTV is standard definition TV. Keep in mind that all of the
programming that is caught by the ATI HDTV Wonder are not in HD format.
In fact, most programs are SD programs that are simply broadcast over
the digital signal, which means they have been digitized. This probably
explains why SD programs show better and are sharper through the HDTV
Wonder than though the WinTV 250MCE.

As far as I know, Microsoft's policy about reinstalling the Windows XP
MCE is the same as regular Windows XP. So, there soould be no issue
about reinstallations, although I have not done it yet.

As for pc hardware requirements, we must remember that we are dealing
with large chunks of video digital data. A fairly robust system is
required. We all know of the necessity for large hard drive capacities.
A muscular CPU and a lot of memory are required.

My first box that I built for Windows MCE was a Athlon XP 1600+ (1.4
GHz) based box with 512 MB of DDR memory. When I ran MCE and watched
live HDTV, the Windows Task Manager showed CPU usage fluctuated around
85%, and all my physical memory was in use except about 90 MBs. At the
moment, the only processes taking up this space were the MCE shell
(ehshell.exe) and the HD tuner (ehrecvr.exe).

For my next MCE box, I beefed up the specs to an Athlon 64 3000+, 1 GB
memory, and an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. There was a startling improvement
in performance.

I don't think you can tell much improvement when going from an IDE hard
drive to a serial Hard drive. The most important technology for better
hard drive performance is the amount of cache buffer, which is 8 MB
these days. Of course you should have a large capacity drive,
especially if you're going record TV.

I use the builtin audio on my Asus K8N motherboard, which supports 8
channel output, although I have a spare Creative Labs Sound Blaster
Audigy 2 card around. I'm satisfied with the sound.

I put in a lot of time on deciding on my box. Because it was going to
be on display when I had guests, the look had to be right. I went with
a model from Ahanix.

If you have a digital camcorder, you might consider a motherboard with
a 1394 port. In the same vein, you should add a muiti-format flash
memory drive or input device for loading digital photo files from a
digital camera to the MCE box.
Your proposed configuration looks spot on. It should do just fine.

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