Media Centre PC comparable to Xbox 360?

Adam · 23 Jan 2007 at 10:00

I have been enjoying the media centre aspect of my Xbox 360 but am not playing games that much purely down to time and not wanting to splash out £40 everytime I fancy something new.

Anyway, my Xbox360 seems a bit extravegent just for a media centre. Would I be able to turn my new conroe spec with X1950Pro into a media centre on par with the Xbox? Previously I have had limited success with TV-Out etc albeit on lesser TV's and lesser graphics cards. Will I be able to achieve the same picture quality that the xbox offers? Obviously the interface will be the same, I just want the same quality as well.

I will be connecting the PC to a 32" Samsung R7 series LCD TV. I would obviously need MCE with the remote control, component cable from the PC to the LCD TV. Anything else?

rolandrat · 23 Jan 2007 at 13:02

Or try a purpose built unit, like snazzio.

Cartho · 23 Jan 2007 at 13:12

well if you want a Media Center PC which can compare to a 360 - then you want a nice bnig monitor, for extreme HD stuff, you want and HDCP compatible gfx card, perferably an 8800 GTX - one of these would PWN the 360's graphics core.

You would also want 2 GB of RAM and probably a Core 2 Quad extreme CPU - the 360 has 3 CPUs, so you would want one with 4, since triple core CPUs do not really exist for PC.
You will also want a TV tuner in it and maybe an HD DVD / Blu - Ray drive - combine this with your nice monitor and HD output from your graphics card and you are away!

Adam · 23 Jan 2007 at 13:37

Well the idea was not to spend loads of cash but more to utilise my new conroe spec which I shall be ordering. I can also sell the xbox which seems to be pretty redundant.

My Xbox is connected to my Samsung LCD TV via VGA at a native resolution of 1366 x 768. With a E6300 and X1950Pro would I be able to achieve this? Just looking to replicate it rather than better it.

Sareth · 23 Jan 2007 at 13:45

If you're on Vista I have no idea what your requirements will be.

if your thinking of using XP Media Center Edition then I can tell you that
my media center pc which is cobbled together from various spare parts, with 1gb of ram a 2ghz sempron processor and a 5x00 series graphics card runs xp media center fine, good DVD playback, recording from SKY is ok but with some artifacts( s-video from Sky Box -> TV Card -> HDD(MCE Caches Live TV) -> Video Card -> TV, ugh !)

Just make sure the video card can output 1366 * 768 (or close).

Theres no point trying to emulate the 360s hardware regardless of wether youre setting up with XP or Vista as long as it does what you want from a Media Center.

Damn, almost forgot, most important thing with XP is an MCE compatible DVD decoder.

P.s. Sorry for all the edits.

bledd · 23 Jan 2007 at 14:45

if you want it for just vidoes (not hd yet..) then a Piii500 with 256mb will be fine

just couple it with a fanless ati/nvidia card that has an svideo out, the software will do the rest

turn off shading, system restore and crap like that and it'll run fine

nice big quiet hard drive or network share, and you're away

rolandrat · 23 Jan 2007 at 14:50

bledd. said:
if you want it for just vidoes (not hd yet..) then a Piii500 with 256mb will be fine

just couple it with a fanless ati/nvidia card that has an svideo out, the software will do the rest

turn off shading, system restore and crap like that and it'll run fine

nice big quiet hard drive or network share, and you're away

Or even better than that, a xbox 1 with xbmc on it (modded), as that will play anything you throw at it, and with the xbox360 skin, will even look like a 360 onscreen

Energize · 23 Jan 2007 at 14:53

Cartho said:
well if you want a Media Center PC which can compare to a 360 - then you want a nice bnig monitor, for extreme HD stuff, you want and HDCP compatible gfx card, perferably an 8800 GTX - one of these would PWN the 360's graphics core.

You would also want 2 GB of RAM and probably a Core 2 Quad extreme CPU - the 360 has 3 CPUs, so you would want one with 4, since triple core CPUs do not really exist for PC.
You will also want a TV tuner in it and maybe an HD DVD / Blu - Ray drive - combine this with your nice monitor and HD output from your graphics card and you are away!

2GB Ram a 8800gtx and a quad core cpu for watching videos? Seriously....

Adam said:
Well the idea was not to spend loads of cash but more to utilise my new conroe spec which I shall be ordering. I can also sell the xbox which seems to be pretty redundant.

My Xbox is connected to my Samsung LCD TV via VGA at a native resolution of 1366 x 768. With a E6300 and X1950Pro would I be able to achieve this? Just looking to replicate it rather than better it.

You hardly need to spend anything, you just need a tv tuner to watch and record tv, even my pc plays 1080p h.264 videos just fine. You can just connect your graphics card straight to the tv using vga at 1360x768.

Pcs are much better in terms of video quality than the xbox 360 is, more so after you add upscaling and postprocessing.