06-04-2010, 04:42 PM
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Thoughts Media Review Team
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 749
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Home Media PCs
We started this conversation off in the Reviewer's forum, but thought it might be of more general interest to the entire community.
I'm just finishing up a review of PowerDVD10 and it's got me thinking about installing a media PC in the living room, hooked up to the 50inch plasma HDTV and the 5.1 receiver/amplifier.
Having had a 'convergent' Windows Mobile Phone for a number of years (and loving it), I'm really into single devices/interfaces, instead of the various discrete components (DVR, Internet Radio, blu-ray player, etc.) that I have now. The idea is to have a single entertainment centre (with a honking great screen!) where I can:
- play DVDs and Blu-Ray disks
- play video downloaded from the internet
- play CDs, MP3s, etc. etc.
- connect to internet radio stations
- network to other computers in the house (802.11n) to play music/video from them
- (optional) play and record live TV
I want to use my AKAI 50inch plasma monitor as the display (it has HDMI and DVI), and I need to be able to run everything from a wireless remote.
So far, my investigations indicate that I can do 1, 2, 3 from within Windows Media Center which comes standard in Windows 7 Home Premium. As far as horsepower is concerned, it seems like anything above a quad-core with 4G should be fine.
4 (Internet Radio stations) seems to be a bit more difficult, since WMC was changed in V7 and doesn't have the same level of 'user defineable' connectivity.
5 (network connection) also seems to be a bit 'hidden' in WMC, but PowerDVD will do this quite handily. I'll need to have an 802.11n built into the PC or get a card.
6 (TV) seems to need a 3rd party card like something from Hauppage, but we could have problems here in Canada since the cable providers (Shaw, etc.) are VERY PROTECTIVE of selling their own hardware to access their signals, etc.
Most of the TV cards seem to come with a remote, or you can buy one from eBay really cheap ($2USD) including a USB IR device.
Has anyone else done this? Any suggestions?
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/drt
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