Opinions on Media Centre PC v New DVD Recorder

Grudle

Hey guys,

My DVD recorder broke during the week and i'm considering not replacing it and puttin the money I would have spent towards a new PC to be used as a Media Centre and so replace it and provide streaming to my XBox 360. Is this a valid idea or is there something i'm missing? I have an LCD tv with VGA input and would pick up a tv tuner to run my cable tv through the PC.

Krusty_Clown

Well, the media PC will cost you a lot more than a new DVD recorder, but you will also get a lot more use out of it...and no more fiddling with those shiny discs..

So yes, it's a valid and worthwhile idea and no, you're not missing anything.. You do have internet access where you would be running the media centre, right?

There are many threads on this forum recommending hardware specs, from CPU, RAM, cases, Hard drives, MCE remotes, TV cards, Graphics cards, etc..

So settle down, and have a good read..

Grudle

Well I've a wireless network in the house so i'd hook up through that. Thanks for the info.

franksm

With your DVD-recorder, you can't connect in over the internet from work and set up a recording. Or playback one of the ones you recorded the previous night.

Tivoli

i bought a dvd recorder and 10 disks for it about a year ago, and programmed in all them episodes of big brother every day, and me and wife watched them when we got time, it was messy, as you can only fit so much on a disk, and the showtime changed a lot, anyway after the season was over the dvd recorder was only used when we were watching something good and it was getting late, and we'ed forget to watch the rest


anyway 3 months later i built my mediacenter, within 10 minutes of the wife using it she said "can we keep this, i never want to watch tv the old way again"

with a dvd recorder you switch to external to watch a taped show, but with a mediacenter you can unplug the antenna from the tv, cause your not going to need the tvs tuner anymore

name of channel, current program and current time every time you change channel

the subtitles kick in when you mute the sound!

tape every episode of a show in about, what? 3 clicks

all your taped stuff is in 1 location, a vertical scrolling menu, with name, time, channel, description of episode (or film), ratings, year it was realesed, actors, etc

jump about( back forward pause) in live tv (and recorded) to replay bits you missed then skip ads, ect

quickly and easily add to your recording list for example.. all the sci-fi films that are on in the next 2 weeks

play all your downloaded shows and films from the same familar remote

it can be put to sleep and woken again from your seat

kaisersose77

I you want proper digital recordings and have sky, get one of these:


http://www.hm-sat-shop.de/receiver-digital-dreambox/dreambox-dm-7020-s.html

or http://www.hm-sat-shop.de/receiver-digital-dreambox/dreambox-dm-600-pvr-s-black-ready.html (not sure if a sky card works on this model yet)