If i built my own media center...

[t7riggah]

Hi guys,

If i built my own media center PC. then how would it work? Whats the difference between windows media center and windows xp? the can WMC become windows xp? like i cna play games and stuff? or how does it work exactly? Can i use the same programs i use on XP on WMC? I have a tv tuner and a tv. and a direct tv box and so how would it work? what kind of processor would i need? How much RAM? How good of a video card?

[Staren]

Wha, hold on a sec. Doing a media center PC / HTPC (home theater PC) / PVR (personal video recorder) is not as simple as building a gaming system. There as a lot more to consider with this project if you want to do it right. If you where expecting a step by step guide on this one, I'm sorry. It's just not going to happen. You've asked a lot of good questions, and I'll try to tell you wants what with Windows Meda Center Edition as I see it.

First off, lets make sure we are using the same terms. If you just typed WMC in a post, it would take people awhile to fighre out what you where talking about. The correct short ver. is MCE for Media Center Edition.

Now, Windows MCE is pretty much XP Pro woth the media center app sitting on top of it. You can exit the meda interface and get right to an XP Pro desktop to use as a normal computer. That being said, the problem with MCE being that it is rather bloated, and picky with hardware. When I built my first HTPC I was planning to use MCE as well since it is the first option you see out there. The PVR community got that out of my head very quickly. It works, but there is an easier way to go.

Where I ended up was with just your standard copy of XP Home, and a stand alone program called GB-PVR for the media fuctions. Works very well. If you want to do more reading on this and what kind of hardware people are using, check out www.byopvr.com

What worries me is the fact that you have a Direct TV box in the mix. To get a TV Tuner to record shows without having toi change channels on the box by hand, you have to rig something up to allow the media pc to control the box. And I do mean "rig". No one has found a real clean way to do this yet. Best advice I can give you is to go to the link I posted and start reading.