What do i need for a media centre?

Greebo

Greebo

Greebo

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I am building a new pc for a mate and using some bits from his old pc.

His old pc is a SFF with a mini ATX mobo with on board graphics and I fancy making a media centre for the lounge.

It's a phenon x3 cpu and I need to add a big hard drive as reusing his but what else do I need?

What software do I need for a remote control and what remote control?

It's all new to me. Not sure I will even add a wireless keyboard yet, just want something to stream movies and music from.

Thanks
 
Stream from? You can stream from any old pc, although I don't think this is what you mean.

As for a media centre software on the pc, i would recommend Boxee, although, that is all i know, so it might not actually be that good any more compared to others.
 
Yeah I didn't really make it clear. So I will have a SFF pc with a blueray drive and hard drive plus hdmi output to the tv and audio to the AV receiver.

I'm after something simple remote control plus software that I can use the pc to play my music and films without having to muck around with keyboard/mouse.

I'll check out Boxee, thanks. Any idea how I add a remote control to the pc and which one?
 
hi,
A cheap MS remote will do the job, they ship with a USB IR receiver for under £ 15.
They will just use Window Media Centre to access your stuff easily.
Its always nice to add a TV card though
 
Thanks. Sorry to being thick but is Windows Media Centre part of Windows 7 or can it be downloaded for free?

Yeah and good idea about the tv card. I presume you can get Sat ones? Only reason I ask is that we only get 4 anologue channels in the are we live in. So I premuse I would need to connect my sky+ up to it somehow?
 
Doh. I have just spotted the SFF scetion. Can a mod move this to there please? I might get a few more replies and help. Thanks :o
 
timciren said:
WMC is installed with W7, there was a similiar thing in Vista too. Look for the Green circle with a flag in the middle.
Yep you can get SAT cards too, they even come with a remote !

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-021-CP&groupid=701&catid=1915&subcat=
Click to expand...

Okey dokey so I would need some extra cables from my Sky dish to this card?

And it meantions freesat. Would this work connected directly to my Sky dish?

Any cards work out there with leaving the Sky dish connected to the sky box?

Or does the lead input and output from the box?

This is all new to me to apologies for the thick questions! lol
 
One thing to be aware off from a user experience point of view, is that the graphics side needs to be butch enough to not only play whatever video content you have etc, but also to run the fairly resource hungry media centre EPG overlay/ effects.

I had a media centre on a gibabyte micro atx motherboard with a core 2 dual core and built in graphics, that was supposedly fully HD compatible. It had HDMI out and generally worked okay, only problem was that if you ever did anything that involved some sort of overlay running on video or tv the thing would start to chug like crazy. So if you made the mistake of pressing the info button whilst watching TV it would really struggle. I threw in a cheapish seperate gfx card and it was all fine. Now done the same thing with 2 media centres, both of which's motherboards were supposed to have on board graphics capable of the job.

E-I
 
Greebo said:
Okey dokey so I would need some extra cables from my Sky dish to this card?
Click to expand...
**Yes, with a bit of luck your dish might support more cables than just your sky. The receiver bit of the dish is called the LNB and typically these days Sky install 4 way LNBs so after the two your Sky +/ HD box is using there should be 2 free.**

And it meantions freesat. Would this work connected directly to my Sky dish?

**Yes**

Any cards work out there with leaving the Sky dish connected to the sky box?
**All should if theres spare ways on the LNB. You can also buy 8 way LNBs and replace your existing**

Or does the lead input and output from the box?
**Nope**
 
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maybe see how your PC copes with WMC by using it to play music and its sample of recorded tv before buying a sat card.
I have a cheap passive GPU aswell
 
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