![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Media Centre PC Stuff
Oct. 29th, 2006 02:44 pmI've had an up/down relationship with our Media Centre PC. On the whole, it has been Up. There have been a few crashes and a couple of hicups but generally its done exactly what I needed it for. Which has been downloading stuff from the Net to play later. It also is a pretty decent Tivo and DVD player.
However, some of the compromises I made when I bought it are starting to get to me. I didn't spend much money - it was something of an experiment and I wasn't going to spend a grand plus on an experiment wherea I could semi-justify a couple of hundred. The challenge now is that with the new TV the limitations are starting to become apparent and I need to think seriously about the options.
Now that more stuff is being encoded in High Definition (which for the purposes of TV downloads are generally 960 line rather than 1080 with 5.1 stereo sound, I'm starting to realise that we could have better.
The MCE has a decent video card which outputs in HDMI format, however, the motherboard only has 2.1 sound, which leads to problems when running AC3 5.1 encoded media files. The codec assumes a central sub-woofer and doesn't handle the sound correctly. I've a reg hack to try which cons the driver into pumping the sound into the split stereo channels, but its not ideal. Likewise, the basic DVD player probably could do with an uplift to a HD format. Finally, the case and the HDD are wrong. The HDD needs to be much larger, alternatively, I need to have a fast network running with the media files on server elsewhere. The later is a solution for the future when we've our dream home.
So, with us likely to move, what should I do?
I think I'll stick with Media Centre. Despite the foibles it's a good UI and a pretty good system. I will not, however, skimp on the HDD size, the Sound Card nor the CPU. If we move to the US, then I'll probably go for a cable package with the PVR functions though, it's overkill for the Media Centre and we mostly use it to play DVDs and internet TV files anyway.
I also spent some time in Best Buy on Friday looking at TVs. I haven't warned M yet, but I think we need something larger than 32" :)
However, some of the compromises I made when I bought it are starting to get to me. I didn't spend much money - it was something of an experiment and I wasn't going to spend a grand plus on an experiment wherea I could semi-justify a couple of hundred. The challenge now is that with the new TV the limitations are starting to become apparent and I need to think seriously about the options.
Now that more stuff is being encoded in High Definition (which for the purposes of TV downloads are generally 960 line rather than 1080 with 5.1 stereo sound, I'm starting to realise that we could have better.
The MCE has a decent video card which outputs in HDMI format, however, the motherboard only has 2.1 sound, which leads to problems when running AC3 5.1 encoded media files. The codec assumes a central sub-woofer and doesn't handle the sound correctly. I've a reg hack to try which cons the driver into pumping the sound into the split stereo channels, but its not ideal. Likewise, the basic DVD player probably could do with an uplift to a HD format. Finally, the case and the HDD are wrong. The HDD needs to be much larger, alternatively, I need to have a fast network running with the media files on server elsewhere. The later is a solution for the future when we've our dream home.
So, with us likely to move, what should I do?
I think I'll stick with Media Centre. Despite the foibles it's a good UI and a pretty good system. I will not, however, skimp on the HDD size, the Sound Card nor the CPU. If we move to the US, then I'll probably go for a cable package with the PVR functions though, it's overkill for the Media Centre and we mostly use it to play DVDs and internet TV files anyway.
I also spent some time in Best Buy on Friday looking at TVs. I haven't warned M yet, but I think we need something larger than 32" :)
