Does running Windows Media Center on a PC ruin performance?

[Nvidiaguy07]

So I have windows media center in use on my main PC. I watch TV on it, but I also have a few 360's connected to it as streamers so I can use them as cable boxes (HD homerun).

Is this affecting the performance of my PC at all? If there are 2 people watching TV on xboxes, and im playing a game on my PC - will I notice?

Also, if its recording in the background - is this also something that will kill my performance?

And I also run a plex server from my PC that my sister is gonna start using - when shes watching movies - how much bandwidth/and cpu resources is this gonna use? Should I be aware of when shes using it?

I dont really care that much anymore - as I really only play single player offline/indie games, but if I do decide to play something competitive I dont wanna worry about either affecting my gaming.

Thanks!

 

[postmark]

Depends on specs. WMC extenders (xbox 360s) shouldn't be CPU intensive, but can be network intensive if you're running 100Mb. Also, if you're running everything off the same HDD you might have some disk thrash that could cause slowness. Plex can be CPU intensive if there's on the fly transcoding going on, so if your CPU is underpowered, then you could see some issues.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

Depends on specs. WMC extenders (xbox 360s) shouldn't be CPU intensive, but can be network intensive if you're running 100Mb. Also, if you're running everything off the same HDD you might have some disk thrash that could cause slowness. Plex can be CPU intensive if there's on the fly transcoding going on, so if your CPU is underpowered, then you could see some issues.

My network is pretty new - all cat5e or cat 6 wires, and my router and hub are fairly new - so I think its a 1gb network? I gotta check.

I keep my DVR drive for WMC on a different hard drive than my games and OS - so I think I should be ok there.

Running a overclocked 3570k - should be enough right?

And on a side note - do other wmc extenders exist besides the 360? Honestly watching TV with a cablecard and wmc has been the best experience Ive had with cable TV so far. Not sure how the XBONE compares, but not really interested in spending 500 on something like that.

If they sold $50 dollar extenders, I know a lot of people who would like to run the same setup as me.

 

[postmark]

The only other extender that is available today is the Ceton Echo. It has it's pros and cons.

http://cetoncorp.com/products/echo/

 

[code65536]

Nah, you should be fine. Back in the analog days, incoming video had to be digitized, and that consumed processing power (sometimes offloaded to the GPU, if you had one of those GPU-tuner hybrid cards that were popular back then). But with digital broadcasts, there is very little processing that needs to be done--just a little bit of disk access.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

Nah, you should be fine. Back in the analog days, incoming video had to be digitized, and that consumed processing power (sometimes offloaded to the GPU, if you had one of those GPU-tuner hybrid cards that were popular back then). But with digital broadcasts, there is very little processing that needs to be done--just a little bit of disk access.

yea thinking about it now, I think Ive had multiple recordings going on while gaming and I havent even noticed.