MediaPC

[ryne100]

My roomates and I took some parts from like 3 different old computers to make a MediaPC for our living room. We have the tuner card and have everything going just fine. What is the best program to use to record tv? Some of the free ones are kind of a pain and it doesn't seem like there are any free channel guides around anymore. We started looking at Windows Media Center because it has a channel guide included and looks smooth, but I guess it only comes preinstalled on machines? Is this true?

[endaround]

Vista Home Premium includes Windows Media Center but you'd have to be able to run Vista

[ryne100]

Would I have to redo all the drivers for evrything then? My roomate has a Vista disc so that wouldn't be out of the question. Is 1GB of RAM enough for Vista?

[Tailgat0r76]

I can't help you much with those questions, but I would just like to say that Windows Media Center is great for watching / recording TV

 

You can only record one thing at a time which sort of stinks, but what can you expect? If there is a conflict in recording two shows, there will always be a warning given so you can work around it.

Burning shows or movies on to DVDs is literally a one step process as well if you have a dvd burner on the computer

And the guide downloads every once in a while and you can look at the tv schedule weeks in advance, it's really great

[endaround]

Are you using this as just a DVR or is it going to be a full media server networked through the house? 1GB is low for Vista from what I understand but if you are just using this as a DVR/MP3 player it may not be so bad. But if you need it to stream to other PCs or Xbox 360s/PS3s you might have issues.

 

Another issue is if you have to run a lot of codecs in the background for "found" video from the internet.

[ryne100]

It will moslty be used for recording video and playing mp3s. I don't think it will be streaming anything. We're planning on using the TV as a second monitor and playing recorded video off that. "Found" videos that are shared from other computers play pretty well now on XP.

 

Does anyone have Windows Media Center and a Zune or GigaBeat?

[Brian the Automator]

I use Windows Media Center at home. It's very nice, and there is all kinds of support for it. And no, you can't buy the OS retail for some reason. I'm fortunate to have developer licenses for all MS products, so I installed it.

 

A lot of people really love MythTV, although it's a Linux solution.

 

I've used Orb before, and it works like a breeze, although the interface is clunky. The nice thing about it is that you can stream your TV tuner and all your media to a web browser, so it works like a Slingbox as well.

 

I hear a lot of people like SageTV, but I have no experience with it.