DH Guide: Building a Media Centre PC

***Zardon*** · Aug 15, 2005, 08:23 AM

Stuart "Veridian3" Davidson has a new guide for those contemplating building a new media centre pc. It has some helpful advice!

"The media centre bug bit me roughly a year ago or so, I�d had messed about for a while with a Radeon All-In-Wonder 9800SE in the past; however, I�ve never seriously set out to use it for heavy multimedia purposes. When my VCR started to show its age and my mates began moaning about the recordings I was giving them, I began looking into building myself a media centre. I went into the task believing it would be a simple thing to do. I knew my stuff as far as PCs go and I thought it wouldn�t be harder than choosing a TV card and off I went� boy was I wrong."

read here

bananaman · Aug 15, 2005, 08:50 AM

nice overview of Media PC

I recently built one with a A643200, 512mb ram, and an old GF3, I also am using the HDA Mystique sound card as it pumps out DolbyDigital Live which means i casn use an Optical cable to my A/V receiver. I will also recommend the Nebula DigiTV PCI if you want to get a seperate TV card

anyway

good article

GNetX · Aug 15, 2005, 09:35 AM

First of all, great article!

However, I couldn't help noticing the lack of detail into a REALLY GOOD Media Centre Suite for those who don't want to use Windows MCE2005 - it's Media Portal, which is an open-source (free!) application that is really worth a look when building a Media Centre PC. I've just built a Media Centre PC and after testing all of the available suites out there, this is (IMO) the best! You can check it you for yourself at http://mediaportal.sourceforge.net. It works especially well with digital free-to-air services such as FreeView here in the UK (I'm using a Compro Videomate DVB-T200).

swatX · Aug 15, 2005, 03:24 PM

Greart Article however for me personally i would have recommended a AMD Athlon x2 3800+ or for people who are in a budget a P4 2.8ghz Dual core that around 250$ i believe.

wolfran · Aug 15, 2005, 09:40 PM

Very nice review indeed.

I'm new to this htpc thing and just currently set up one.
I will also get a hdtv soon and my questions are:
1. Can htpc do upscaling on DVD source? For example if I set my computer resolution at 720p, does that automatically upscale my dvd source into 720p?
2. What are your recommendation to get the best experience in watching dvd out of a htpc? I read that people are using ffdshow, dscaler, zoomplayer to get the best dvd experience, what's your take on this?
3. How's the picture quality of a htpc compare to a good stand-alone dvd player?

UPDATE: This Media Portal software looks very promising, I'll definitely give it a try once i get my hdtv.

***Veridian3*** · Aug 16, 2005, 03:57 AM

GnetX,

I had a look at the software you suggested a while ago using the Theatre 550P when it was first released. Unfortunately it didnt like the way the 550 processes Audio and Video so i didnt give it a second thought when writing this article. I can see from the page that it does now support the 550 so if i get the chance i'll give it a once over sometime and amend the article if required.

SwatX,
I wouldnt recommend the 2.8ghz intel dual core for this type of system (well not over a 3500+ anyway) the reason for this is heat (its not overly hot but is hotter than an A64 and that the 3500+ is cheaper and in encoding it is about the same as the 2.8DC. As for the 3800+, great chip but i was trying to keep the price down for the basic system as much as possible.

***Veridian3*** · Aug 16, 2005, 03:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wolfran

1. Can htpc do upscaling on DVD source? For example if I set my computer resolution at 720p, does that automatically upscale my dvd source into 720p?
2. What are your recommendation to get the best experience in watching dvd out of a htpc? I read that people are using ffdshow, dscaler, zoomplayer to get the best dvd experience, what's your take on this?
3. How's the picture quality of a htpc compare to a good stand-alone dvd player?

That i dont know, where i live we are just getting ready for the launch of HDTV so i have no experience with it. Hopefully someone else who visits the site can answer that.

puneett · Aug 16, 2005, 09:01 AM

I have p3 1.2GHZ tulatin core , with 512MB ram.
Do u think it will be able to handle the recording of my fav. programms with MCE2005...without any problem....

OR otherwise its only going in scrap!!

***Veridian3*** · Aug 16, 2005, 11:57 AM

If you buy a hardware encoding card it should handle it fine... but dont be expecting to do more than one thing at a time.

K9-Cop · Aug 23, 2005, 08:10 PM

I don't know how it compares in terms of quality, but I use a freeware program called VideoLAN Media Player in order to play DVD's on my computer. Check it out if you're interested: http://www.videolan.org.

ROBSCIX · Aug 29, 2005, 03:44 PM

Maybe you guys can answer this it's not totally off topic. I was getting into the media PC thing. I had installed a demo of a program I liked, I have losted the demo and can't remember the name for the life of me. Ok this program was a sort of front end for a media PC, you could set it to load when you turned on the PC...Videos..Mp3's..Pic's..etc....I think it had theatre or cinema in the name...Please end the madness, it's driving me crazy...

Falstaff · Aug 30, 2005, 06:25 AM

I have seen several trade magazines with guides for building media and gaming PCs but some of the machines on the market offer reasonable performance and prices, almost makes it harder to build your own really, but then OEM parts are often pale facsimiles of the real thing right?

BiGBrOwNPimpsta · Sep 11, 2005, 10:38 PM

ok well im interested in changing over to windows MCE2005 and getting a tv wonder elite for my system, thus will be a gaming/media center hybrid system.

in the article it said:
"MCE2005 is basically Windows XP SP2 with a comprehensive media suite built in." is this windows xp HOME OR PRO? because if it is home it is lacking some of the features i need such as the group policy editor, advanced users mgmt etc. is MCE2005 xp home + media center or xp pro + media center

GNetX · Sep 17, 2005, 09:05 AM

@BiGBrOwNPimpsta - Microsoft claims that MCE 2005 is still based on Windows XP Professional Edition. Microsoft has removed the ability for a MCE 2005 computer from joining a domain or to cache network logins, in order to prevent computer companies from selling MCE over Professional to business environments, since it is priced at below Windows XP Professional. All other features of Windows XP Professional edition are retained in MCE 2005.

My source is Wikipedia, but unfortunately I have no first-hand experience with MCE 2005 - my preferred Media Centre software is the open-source Media Portal - see my sig.

Hope this helps.

- GNetX

BiGBrOwNPimpsta · Sep 17, 2005, 05:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GNetX

@BiGBrOwNPimpsta - Microsoft claims that MCE 2005 is still based on Windows XP Professional Edition. Microsoft has removed the ability for a MCE 2005 computer from joining a domain or to cache network logins, in order to prevent computer companies from selling MCE over Professional to business environments, since it is priced at below Windows XP Professional. All other features of Windows XP Professional edition are retained in MCE 2005.

My source is Wikipedia, but unfortunately I have no first-hand experience with MCE 2005 - my preferred Media Centre software is the open-source Media Portal - see my sig.

Hope this helps.

- GNetX

thanks for the info, i think i am going to try all the stuff i need on a computer at work running MCE2005. then i can positively determine i have the stuff i need