Question about MCE machines

[ahsia]

My friend is looking to build a MCE 2005 machine for his home entertainment. He has all the parts for the machine except for the video card and the capture card. What do you guys recommend for him to get? He has a P4 2.8GHz, 512mb of memory, 250GB hard drive. I don't know much about MCE and what the requirements are, but he isn't looking to spend too much more on this machine. Just need enough for the MCE functions. Thanks for your time...

 

[Matthias99]

You don't need much for the video card (pretty much anything should work), but you'll need a hardware capture card. I'd be hard-pressed to recommend anything other than the Hauppauge PVR150 right now for SD hardware MPEG2 video capture.

 

[FNC Jon]

You could also look into a all in wonder ati card that has capturing on it as well, it depedn on what you are capturing, digital video or analog or just tv form a tv tunner. Digital you need a firwire card and some software. ATI cards can be high priced tho but on ebay you can get them cheap and they are good cards. If its jsut a tv tunner ati has a bunch of those too. AIW wonder have capturing tv tunners, capturing analogue, good graphics, hdtv ready and so one, hence the All In Wonder part of the name.

FNC JON

 

[ahsia]

I read a lot of people are having problems with older video cards, they are getting errors like drivers or video cards not compatible and stuff.

He currently has DirecTV, so I don't know what that would require. Also, if in case he does drop DirecTV and gets digital cable, what would he need?

 

[FNC Jon]

Check out atis site on thier main page it shows thier new tv tunner that does bot old and new signals, digital and analogue.

www.ati.com

FNC JON