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Media Center PC

T

TheGeek

Golden Member
I am looking at turning my current, loud, beast of a PC into a nice quiet Media Center PC.I have no idea where to start. Any suggestions?
 
OK, that tells me how to silence it, but what about other componets/software. Im going to be using it with a widescreen HDTV, and I want it to be able to play any type of CD/DVD but also games. I have an Xbox, and could also turn that into an all-in-one media center. Help with that would be appreciated too. Thanks in advance.
 
If you want to do this, you should be willing to at least put in a minimum amount of effort rather than relying on everyone else to do the work for you. Had you looked on the navigation bar on the left side of the site I posted above, you would have seen a recommended link, which surprisingly enough, is a list of recommended parts for a quiet PC.
 
To record, a PCI card with hardware MPEG2 encoding, Hauppage makes good cheap ones.

To playback, a video card with TV-out or a plasma / other high end TV with a VGA port

To have a fancy user interface, programs like SageTV, BeyondTV, or Windows Media Center Edition.

I haven't looked into software yet myself so can't recommend for or against any of the above, you might check out http://www.avsforum.com

One source of Hauppage + software bundles (cheaper than Newegg) is pcalchemy.com
 
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