What is Windows Media Center Edition?

[kylef]

Originally posted by: spyordie007

In order to watch one channel and record another, you need 2 TV Tuners. To record 3 channels you need 3 tuner cards.

Or 2 dual TV Tuners.

I wasnt aware that MCE would support multiple tuner cards, but if the site says it can record 3 channels at once than I'm assuming this to be true.

MCE 2005 supports up to 4 tv tuners.

I personally am using a single PCI Hauppauge PVR-250MCE, and it works beautifully.

Others I know have two of those cards installed for a dual-tuner setup.

The more tuners you add, obviously the more I/O your system must be able to handle. But CPU isn't really much of an issues because as Drag pointed out, all of the MPEG2 encoding should be done by the tv tuner card hardware.

I personally don't know anyone who has gotten an ATI AIW card to work yet as a tv tuner in MCE 2k5. They're supposed to be compatible, but I think the ATI driver for MCE actually requires a minimum of a 3Ghz hyperthreaded CPU to work.

I don't know which tv tuner card Dell uses internally. I wouldn't be surprised if it were the Hauppauge card.