GADGETotW: Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005

[Guest tsutton]

anyone know if this is genuine?

http://classifieds.nochex.com/viewad.asp?i...704134171419744

It's fake. Here's what he said out of his mouth:

Hi,

Cracked copy with XP Pro Service Pack 2, Activation Tool, Full Instructions and fully functional.

Thanks

Paul

Do Not Buy it.

[Guest Fozza]

It's a cool little gadget.

However what about an Xbox that has been modified to act as a media centre?

Ok so you can't record on it but you can link it wirelessly to your PC and stream or download movies.

Play all your music thorough it DVD's DIVx.

Play interent radio or indeed play the latest global movie trailers all at the touch of a remote control button.

and at under £250 for the lot cheaper than a "Normal" XP Media Centre.

;)

[Guest Jamma14]

Although Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 is a good idea a lot of the ideas and design etc have been ripped off from the XBMC creators.

[Guest Paul [MVP]]

Hey, there is a Dreamcast (featuring Windows CE) under there too.

Ah, Dreamcast, what a great machine that never did as well as it should... :cry:

P

OMG! GAMECUBE? BETRAYER!

[Guest Paul [MVP]]

Er, it's more the other way round I think... :shock:

P

Although Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 is a good idea a lot of the ideas and design etc have been ripped off from the XBMC creators.

[Guest Paul [MVP]]

Although XBMC is quite cool (I used to have an XBox), it's pretty impractical if, like me, you wan't the centerpiece of the device's capability to be PVR ;)

P

It's a cool little gadget.

However what about an Xbox that has been modified to act as a media centre?

Ok so you can't record on it but you can link it wirelessly to your PC and stream or download movies.

Play all your music thorough it DVD's DIVx.

Play interent radio or indeed play the latest global movie trailers all at the touch of a remote control button.

and at under £250 for the lot cheaper than a "Normal" XP Media Centre.

:D

[Guest rekall]

Although XBMC is quite cool (I used to have an XBox), it's pretty impractical if, like me, you wan't the centerpiece of the device's capability to be PVR ;)

P

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Exactly the reason why I want to replace my XBMC with MCE as the central hub of house.

[Guest sisniper]

Guys

has anyone figured out why the c500 with wmp10 wont synch with MCE2005?

Thanks

Si

[Guest sisniper]

Guys

has anyone figured out why the c500 with wmp10 wont synch with MCE2005?

Thanks

Si

[Guest gazzer82]

Yeah, another pleade for assistance here. I have been waiting for WMP10 on my C500 for so long, purely for this reason with my 1gb sd card. But un-suprisingly it doesn't bloody work!! It must have something to do with it not being a portable media center persay. I have the same problem with my Creative Zen Xtra, will sync fine within media player but not in media center. Although due to my Zen being even older it won't even sync automatically which is even more annoying. Especially considering media center will automatically sync to a bloody card reader!!

Anyone got any ideas for getting this to work??

I'm out of ideas ;)

Cheers

Gareth

[Guest An-d]

yep I have a zen and i can't get sync to work either, anyone used MCE 2005 with an M2000?

By the way I have a very very quite system, with mostly Zalman cooling in a butiful aluminim case. (have a look at the silverstone cases some time)

I have got a AMD 2500-M undervolted to produce less ;)

A 160GB Samsung spinpoint drives that runs virtually silient.

I have 2 Pinnicle 300i cards, that gives me nearly all the freeveiw channels.

( dont listen to the noise on the net these work really well) and they can be easily convert to fit in a low profiles case and they only cost 49 quid each.

I have been tweaking it for a while and would reccomed installing as little extra software as possible and only one DVD codec.

thre system runs really well, it can record 2 channels at the same time and play back a recorded show with out blinking.

Because the 300i cards receive a singnal that is basically Mp4 they have very little work to do and the load on the pc is minimal.

in fact I had the same system working on 1600xp just as well!

[Guest AngelOfRage]

im considering buying XP MCE 2005 and the remote for my current PC. my one question is this..

I will want to plug in my 28" TV for watching movies and films etc. and have my 19" LCD used for webbrowsing, etc. how easy is it to switch between the two? or can i have both running at the same time?

[Guest Paul [MVP]]

Yes, you can do that.

I have had the TV and monitor running at the same time, using remote desktop and a bit of tweaking ;)

P

[Guest An-d]

im considering buying XP MCE 2005 and the remote for my current PC. my one question is this..

I will want to plug in my 28" TV for watching movies and films etc. and have my 19" LCD used for webbrowsing, etc. how easy is it to switch between the two? or can i have both running at the same time?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I have a low profile ati 9250 card that runs two outputs and it works, i can surf the web while the kids wach TV. It does not cause to many issues.

The control between windows and the media center screen can be a bit "sticky" but a tap on either the windows key or "green button " mce 2005 remote works. It is not ideal but it does work.

I am currently using dvr2wmv to convert files to use on my shinney new M2000. but it has issues.

does anyone have advice for PAL converstion of DVR-MS to WMV or even Divx? I see this as my biggest issue as DVR-MS files are huge.

[Guest rekall]

Would you guys recommend a MCE box over a Freeview DVR? My Thomson DHD4000 DVR is great but MCE has so much more.

[Guest sisniper]

there is a free install for mce from microsoft, seems to work a treat as Ive never got dvrwmv to work.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default....html/dvr-ms.asp

see if this helps, just replace the encoder prx file with one of your own, so you will need windows media encoder to create these

[Guest redgemini]

Can anyone help on this one -

We want to connect Sky into Media Centre - we have a plasma screen with an external tuner box so sky currently connects thru that - but we want it thru media centre so we can record etc - any help appreciated - we have a Packard Bell Ixtreme Gold MC 1904 if that helps anyone?

[Guest An-d]

Can anyone help on  this one -

We want to connect Sky into Media Centre - we have a plasma screen with an external tuner box so sky currently connects thru that - but we want it thru media centre so we can record etc - any help appreciated - we have a Packard Bell Ixtreme Gold MC 1904 if that helps anyone?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

should be fairly simple. i have checked your pc on the parckard bell website but i can not see if it has a tv in port. I suspect it does not. you need this to plug the SKY box into the media centre. you would need to get a graphics card with TV in to replace the one you have or get a separate video capture device .

after that you need to be able to change the channels on your sky box. If you have the standard ms 2005 OEM remote the receiver that plugs into your pc should have 2 extra ports these are used to plug infra red transmitters that you place in front of you sky box to change the channels.

I brought my remote separately and it came with 2 spare emitters. If you can not get hold of one or you have a different receiver you could by a red-eye separately that will plug into either a serial port or USB.

now the sky box will go thru the media centre to the TV and you can use your media centre remote to change the channels.

you should then be able to change your EPG (guide) to sky and use all the channels through your media centre.

(NB. for some reason my TV input on my pinnacle 3000i is not recognised.. but i don’t need it anyway.. you should check www.thegreenbutton.com for compatibility before buying a new input card)

njoy

[Guest kpaden]

I think that we should consider the 1GB miniSD card from www.mobymemory.com as the gadget of the week. I recently got mine.

I use it for videos.

[Guest SAI]

A bit of info about my setup:

My Xbox is chipped and am running Xbox Media Center on it (the only reason I actually bought the Xbox!). I can link it up to any PC (Windows or Linux) over the network and stream videos and music and also show off my holiday photo's.

For recorded TV shows, I record them direct to a shared network folder so the Xbox can pick it up straight away. It's fantastic!

You don't need a Media Center PC to link your Xbox up, unless you don't want to chip your Xbox.

Anyway, my question;

Does anyone know of a Media Center remote control for the SPV C500?

I've got one on my iPAQ (Niveus Pocket Remote) but it would be nice to have one on my phone as well.

Cheers.

SAI

Edited June 24, 2005 by SAI

[Guest Shakface]

Can anyone help on  this one -

We want to connect Sky into Media Centre - we have a plasma screen with an external tuner box so sky currently connects thru that - but we want it thru media centre so we can record etc - any help appreciated - we have a Packard Bell Ixtreme Gold MC 1904 if that helps anyone?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi Redgemini

It is possible to connect sky to your Media Centre. You just need a SCART to Svideo cable with Phono. Bought from Maplins for about £9.99. Take the scart from the TV out on the sky box to the Svidio input on your MCE tv card. Works a treat for me. You get all the features of Sky+ on MCE.

You even get 14 days of EPGm downloaded from the net of course.

HTH

[Guest smellybaby]

hey a few questions here

ive got a media centre pc, got it earlier this year about march, media centre is great

i cant wotch normal tv without pausin etc..

but a few questions

1)ive got a ps2/xbox and i want to connect them up to the computer

i know you can connect them up through the rf thingamijg(where i plug the tv ariel in) but the quality is terrible

(besides in my house i only recieve 2 channels clearly lol). my computers got these input/output sockets on the front of it.

ive got the red/white/yellow sockets and what looks like an s-video socker. there is also another small socket next to it that, i dunno wot it is. anyway are these input or output sockets because i wana hook up my xbox/ps2 up to this and there are no scart holes on this and iv'e got all the leads for xbox/ps2 so.(the computer came with no instrcutions so) i tried once but i didn't know where to go to play(ie i went to media centre and it couldn't exactly find it,i fiugred it might be like a tv with an av input) when i did connect it up i could swear i heard the startup noise the ps2 makes. im hoping these are input so i can connect up 2 ps2/xbox and not output for me to connect to a tv

2) right now ive got terrestial tv, 5channels(well more like 2/3 because of bad condition ariel) i want freeview. boxes are cheap but they all come with scart leads, my computer doesn't have a scart socket but i know you can use the red/white/yellow if i just buy an adpater. there are some boxes which don't require scart sockets but not so easy to find. so again i need to know if these sockets are input/output. also if i get freeview and it all works out how will it change media centre. ill have more channels so will freeview be just one extra channel and then i use the freeview to access the channel i want(like sky/ntl). say i wanted to record something on e4, would i need 2 leave freeview on e4 and then use media centre like normal. will i still have all the pause/rwind... facilities media centre has. also there are people on ebay and such selling freeview usbs, you just plug them in, plug the ariel in and voila. will this work for media centre(all the same questions as freeeview boxes basicly

3)what is all this about connecting an xbox up. i recently bought one(the orginal one, not the 360) can i do all this media centre stuf with it

I KNOW these questions are long etc. basciyl i just want to if the sockets are input or output, if they are input how can i access them on the pc(on tvs you just go to av)

somebody out there please help me, my computer with no instrucitions whatsoever, i think it was a refurbished or an ex-display model (my dad got it for