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Building a HT Media Center computer * Want YOUR input

C

Cybordolphin

Platinum Member
I am putting together a HT media center PC. I have most of the components.

I purchased an AIW 9800 Pro retail. Comes with a remote.

I am not too happy with the AIW. What suggestions do you have for putting together a media center PC?
Would you use a Hauppage card or?

My dissapointment with the AIW, are the poor TIVO quality (will try to set for a lesser quality recording to see if the performance is better..... currently get a jitter). And also I can not seem to get any AC3 sound out of the damn outputs.... I have tried everything. All in all it has been far too time consuming to tweak the AIW. The tuner does not get one of my favorite channels clearly (sort of pisssssed me off). The software is a bit flakey as well.

So... if you have some ideas, or have built a media center PC and can let me know what you found to work very well... let me know. I am thinking of trying the MS media center software next. I have read the the BEYOND TV, works very well also.

Thanks to anyone who takes time to post
 
Tinker with your setup a bit- the AIW should be FAR from jittery. It's also supposed to offer good TV-capturing quality- comparable to that offered by dedicated Hauppauge cards.

If you do end up buying a Hauppauge, the PVR-150MCE is the replacement for the PVR-250 and PVR-250MCE. (It's kind of misleading since the 150 is cheaper and numbered lower than the 250s) The 150/250 lines all offer hardware ENcoding and software decoding. The PVR-350 performs hardware encoding and decoding. A relatively new addition is the PVR-500, which is a dual tuner solution- you can use it to record FOX while watching/time-shifting NBC.

The guys over at htpc news are great if you need help getting your AIW off the ground.
 
My brother tried using Leadtek and AIW cards and couldn't get either working perfectly (audio glitches mostly). He gave up and bought a Hauppage PVR that worked for him out of the box.

Pandamonium is right that an AIW should be able to do as well as the Hauppage, at least on a 2+ GHz CPU that isn't doing anything else. It's just that the hardware encoding of the Hauppage uses so much less CPU power that it seems easier for most people to get it running problem-free without tweaking.

The PVR-150 is all you need, it's just as good as (and replaces) the older PVR-250 but costs less.

For other opinions, check out www.AVSForum.com and try search "HTPC" (and advanced search > archived threads for old threads). Be sure to look both here and in the Video forum.
 
Thanks guys....

I finally have the AIW working fairly well.... but still have some glitches.

Now any legitimate DVD that I try to play using the AIW program, is being locked (saying that only 420i, and 420p images will be allowed to play). Oddly enough when I play my copied DVD's they play just fine... so it is some sort of security problem gone amuck. The handshake between my AIW and my SONY 60" is not happening on legitimate new DVDS. Go figure.

Anyway....... I also found that the latest drivers create a total mess with the resolutions syncing with the monitor. So I have stayed with the prior driver release. This allows me to send out a nice full screen image to my monitor (only a slight underscan).

I gotta tell you..... it was no picnic getting this AIW to work properly. I am not happy with ATI about this at all. I have always found their cards to work fairly well for me.

No piece of hardware should be so much headache to install. I have not had this kind of trouble for many years putting together a build.
 
Lose the AIW. Sell it and get a cheaper video card. Then buy the MyHD MPD-130 (or 120 to save money). Or buy the Fusion Gold HDTV tuner card. Plan for the future man, eventually you'll want the HDTV.
 
try htpcnews.com for any help, i'd go with a 150-MCE actually go for two of them since most TV apps support dual tuners, plus they are hardware based mpeg encoders and not software like the AIW
 
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