Pc upgrades

karltimber

Hi folks,

I am planning on upgrading my two pcs at home.
One large media pc (antec case,P4 2005 MCE) under my lcd and a P4 gaming machine (spare room).
I use them both to stream avi's, music etc over cat5 in the house.

So, I want to put an upgraded gaming pc (vmc, quad core) into the spare room and use this as the main media/recorded tv/gaming pc and then have an extender under the TV,possibly using an Xbox360. All media will be kept on the main pc in the spare room.
(i have read the xbox faq but thought some of those faqs may have changed)

So a few basic questions before I research my setup in more detail.
1. Can I play m2ts (hd) files thru the 360 onto my tv?
2. Can I play avi's thru the 360?
3. Can I suf the web thru the 360?
4. What connections are on the 360 for 5.1 sound?
5. Can I use my existing wmce remote and keyboard?

appologies if these are super basic questions but just wanted to know the basics before I kick off on my new project.

any other ideas options would be great,

thx

karltimber

J-blk

karltimber wrote: »

So a few basic questions before I research my setup in more detail.
1. Can I play m2ts (hd) files thru the 360 onto my tv?
2. Can I play avi's thru the 360?
3. Can I suf the web thru the 360?
4. What connections are on the 360 for 5.1 sound?
5. Can I use my existing wmce remote and keyboard?

Hi Karltimber,

I use the Xbox360 as an extender to grab all media from my WHS system so that's a similar setup. In regards to your questions:
1. I'm not so sure about m2ts files - I've never come across one so someone else will have to answer that. I'm gravitating heavily towards no though...
2. Yes. You may need to install an optional media update but you'll be prompted for that when you first try to play one. No problems after that, every avi I've thrown at it plays just fine.
3. No. You can only browse the Xbox Live Marketplace, join Xbox Live games. There is no standalone proper browser on the Xbox 360.
4. There's optical out on most (all?) of them - the ones with HDMI can use the HDMI connection for 5.1 audio too I believe.
5. Again, no I'm afraid. There's a media center styled remote for the Xbox which will in fact work on an XP/Vista Media Center system but the opposite (MCE remote on Xbox) does not work. Neither will the keyboard...

mediacentre.ie

.m2ts files are the files on a bluray disk that anydvd Hd can rip to your HDD. I would think you would be better off encoding them to x264 avi. you don't need the 8 audio tracks of the .m2ts they are way to big.

.m2ts 8 audio tracks 25GB

.avi 1 audio track 10GB ish

can your current media centre play bluray? (prob not) if it does why don't you just keep that and upgrade the gaming PC?

karltimber

What I may do is upgrade the gaming pc and use it for media also -recording tv, encoding, editing etc and stream the whole lot to a Popcorn Hour unit under the tv. they support everything -m2ts,avi,bittorrent

That way I can tidy it all up and have full hd camcorder movies stream over cat5. Movies are in avi format at the minute.
Might be the easier option.

question - outside of cost would a core2duo be enough for a gaming rig or am I better off with a quad core.

thx

k.

mediacentre.ie

I didn't know the popcon can play .m2ts? it's a really cool little thing. no TV tuner though. shame

I went from a

e6400 oc @3.2ghz

to a

Q6600 oc @3.2ghz

I have to say there was no difference with COD4, Crysis, etc

I was limited by my 8800 gts 640mb

I would go for a cheap C2D really good mb that overclocks like the nvidia 780i - 790i and spend the money on a really good GPU.

most games now are only programmed for 2 cores.

BUT

newer games will be programmed for 4 cores so it might be a way to future proof and if you care about how long video encoding takes. the q6600 would make a big difference.

If you plan on sli then quad core would also a good choice as well but for gaming now with one GPU then I wouldn't bother.

karltimber

I have decided on the quad core for the pc with the popcorn-hour for streaming the media over to the living room
I will be editing HD m2ts files -so may as well use the quad.

a few questions around gaming/media pc parts:
Capture/tuner card - Can I record Free to Air digital channels with the Hauppage HVR 1100 ? FTA is all I need to record. And thru MCE. Or the 1200, 1300 or 1700 versions ?
CPU fan: this do the trick -noise not a major problem.
MB: for use with a Quad core extreme -here.
Suitable ram - possibly 3-4 gb.

I have a GC and hd's.
any other ideas options - open to all.
thx

k