Ok, so my secondary PC has been upgraded and transplanted into an Antec Sonata case (the quietest case I've ever owned, and came highly recommended for multimedia PC's). Since there are 3 PC's in the house, I figured I'd turn this one into a multimedia PC, and use it as a PVR instead of buying a TiVo.
The issue: The latest edition of Windows XP Media Center Edition requires hardware MPEG-2 decoding on the fly in the video card. No shirking-off of the decoding duties to the CPU is allowed.
The problem: ATi seems to be evasive in listing exactly which products are fully compatible and which ones are not.
I figured a Radeon AIW 9600 Pro would be a decent choice (to replace the GF3 ti4200 in it now), since it will be used mostly for video recording and playback and not so much for gaming (but still decent). However, the descriptions I've found say it requires at least a 1Ghz CPU in order to get MPEG-2 decoding. This implies that it is not built into the card at all, and is instead sending the decoding duty to the CPU (requiring the 1Ghz), which means MCE 2005 won't support the card to begin with. (I believe Anandtech's article on MCE 2005 said the OS won't even load if it can't find a compatible device, but I could be wrong.)
Granted, the ATi cards have their own software for performing the various video functions, but I've heard that Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 has a lot going for it.
Any suggestions?
The issue: The latest edition of Windows XP Media Center Edition requires hardware MPEG-2 decoding on the fly in the video card. No shirking-off of the decoding duties to the CPU is allowed.
The problem: ATi seems to be evasive in listing exactly which products are fully compatible and which ones are not.
I figured a Radeon AIW 9600 Pro would be a decent choice (to replace the GF3 ti4200 in it now), since it will be used mostly for video recording and playback and not so much for gaming (but still decent). However, the descriptions I've found say it requires at least a 1Ghz CPU in order to get MPEG-2 decoding. This implies that it is not built into the card at all, and is instead sending the decoding duty to the CPU (requiring the 1Ghz), which means MCE 2005 won't support the card to begin with. (I believe Anandtech's article on MCE 2005 said the OS won't even load if it can't find a compatible device, but I could be wrong.)
Granted, the ATi cards have their own software for performing the various video functions, but I've heard that Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 has a lot going for it.
Any suggestions?
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