Media Centre

[Slymeat]

Bought myself all the parts and made up a media centre puter, Battlefield 2142 on a 32 inch HD LCD simply amazing. I need to do some work to wirelessly network my puters now and I need some help as I have used up all my slots as it is only a micro mainboard, so I need to conect to my LAN wirelessly using my USB conectors. To do this I need more USB ports can this be done, and how ( which is the best way remembering I just a pleb)?

[F6 UTE]

Unsure of the USB option, but what about:

Ethernet port from your media pc to a router, then get a wireless access point and plug that into one of the ethernet ports in the router. I assume you want to host from the media PC??

Simple solution anyway.....

[ZAP]

Sly,

You can buy 8 port USB hubs with power for about $50, this should solve that problem.

As for the MEdiacenter, I think they are still 2 years away before they are sorted. I would also run Windows VISTA media center edition on one as it is better suited for that type of duty.

IF I was going to get a media center, I would buy a dedicated box, designed for the task as PCs are not the best solution for this type of work. They are generally noisy because of their design.

Good luck, and make sure you get the twin digital tuner cards,so you can record 2 programs at the same time.

[mattson]

I built a media centre a month or so back

using a P4 - 2.6ghz cpu, 2gb hi-po ram, 200gb hdd, 16x dvd, Nvidia 6600gt gfx card, dvico dual-HD tuner card and sound blaster audigy 4 sound card, running XP MCE 2005, run's a treat.

I already have a wi-fi network in my house, so it just connects to that... watch /record high-def shows, steam DivX & XviD movies across the airwaves no dramas.

No crashes, lag, problems anything. it's pefect, unlike zapper, I'd highly recommend them

oh yeah as for noise, a $400 case sorted that out... quite as a baby sleeping.

Matt

[mattson]

P.S. admittedly I've spent more then $1500 on the MCE HTPC box, and I could probably get a twin-hd tunner STB and a DVD STB for much less, but neither have the ability to hook into a wi-fi network so I can watch the stories I download off the internet... which is just such a bonus for me.

[veczar]

For sound go the x-Fi it is awsome!

You can get USB hub, or more internal usb ports with a PCI USB card (if you have free PCI slots)

[stang]

Sly,

You can buy 8 port USB hubs with power for about $50, this should solve that problem.

As for the MEdiacenter, I think they are still 2 years away before they are sorted.  I would also run Windows VISTA media center edition on one as it is better suited for that type of duty.

IF I was going to get a media center, I would buy a dedicated box, designed for the task as PCs are not the best solution for this type of work.  They are generally noisy because of their design.

Good luck, and make sure you get the twin digital tuner cards,so you can record 2 programs at the same time.

←

I built a media centre a month or so back

using a P4 - 2.6ghz cpu, 2gb hi-po ram, 200gb hdd, 16x dvd, Nvidia 6600gt gfx card, dvico dual-HD tuner card and sound blaster audigy 4 sound card, running XP MCE 2005, run's a treat.

I already have a wi-fi network in my house, so it just connects to that... watch /record high-def shows, steam DivX & XviD movies across the airwaves no dramas.

No crashes, lag, problems anything. it's pefect, unlike zapper, I'd highly recommend them

oh yeah as for noise, a $400 case sorted that out... quite as a baby sleeping.

Matt

←

I agree with Matt I had set top box and digital pic was jerky at times , I now have a media pc with happauge tv card no jerkiness and runs beautyfully.

Also heard, forget vista too resource hungry, A review was done with a p4 3.o gig and decent video card and it was struggling. I run media centre xp edition and am very happy. damm now I got 4 pc`s lol.

[Slymeat]

I went out and bought a Dlink router and a wireless USB adaptor, having alot of fun trying to get it to work though.

[mattson]

yeah, never been a big fan of usb networking devices since I had one a few years back... would drop out when I played Ultima Online... not good.

I'll stick to PCI devices I reckon.

going back to Veczar's comment about sound and the x-fi, while I don't dispute it is an awesome sound card, I am outputting my Audigy 4 through SP-Dif straight into my amplifier, so I do not need any fancy sound card for a direct digital feed, and I definately wasn't going to pay the asking price for the x-fi either... lol

[F6 UTE]

I went the easy ( and cheaper ) option of just getting a Zensonic Z500

I have it hooked up to my Ethernet and it runs everything I d/l and has internet radio etc..

Streams DVD, upsclaes all my Xvids and with Nero 7 it streams my DVICO HD capture card in HD to the Z500 thru to the projector in HDMI/DVI and optical to the amp.

Marvelous

No, I can't game on it, buuut if I'm desperate, I just take the case and wireless keyboard/mouse down to the thrtre rm and hook into the eth down there..