Building my 1st real HTPC, Need help!

Dancing_Priest

I've currently acquired this shuttle as a base for a HTPC.
I'll be adding a terrabyte or two of space and dropping in a blu ray drive soon enough.
My main use will be for storing and playing videos and music.

I would like to use it as a TV reciever, but my experiences from the past are not great. Back in college I used a pvr-150 card to take a signal from an NTL box via svideo and controlled the channels via an IR Blaster. The picture was noticibly worse than the STB and there was quite a delay in using the remote.
What I would like to do is use a dual reciever DVB-C card with a Nagravision 3 CAM and use it with my NTL Subscription card and bypass the STB all together. Barring the clause barring using unauthourised equipment to connect to the cable, Is this possible?
Secondly I would like to use an ipod touch as a remote and would like to know if anyone has had any experience of this?
Lastly I'm probably going to be using Media Portal, Whats the gerneral consensus on this, is there anything better on the market?

kaisersose77

think you need a box id to use ntl with a nagravision cam, so not possible as you cannot get the box id from any menu. Better off getting sky for something like this.


Hate mediaportal with a vengance myself, think its slow and buggy. Vista media centre is an awful lot better imo.

Auvers

kaisersose77 wrote: »

Hate mediaportal with a vengance myself

whats the latest version you have used?

I find mediaportal to be the best out there at the moment but it does take a lot of configuration to get it right

MSMC is the Devil incarnate

dingdong1234567

Personally if find Media portal a pain in the Sphincter, Media Browser is the way to go along with Meta Browser for xml data. Can't see past it, runs smooth and easy to configure.

Auvers

sh1t sorry mate but media browser is damn ugly

here have a look at the streamed MP skin and moving pictures plugin for mediaportal 1.0.1

dingdong1234567

Auvers wrote: »

sh1t sorry mate but media browser is damn ugly

here have a look at the streamed MP skin and moving pictures plugin for mediaportal 1.0.1

Sphincter

kaisersose77

might look nice in screenshots, but is never smooth anytime i've tried it. Cant compare to the smoothness of xbmc. Way too buggy for my liking, made my quad core pc look too slow the last i tried it.

Auvers

dingdong1234567 wrote: »

Sphincter

wow an intelligent well thought out comment, how long did it take you to come up with that? did you have to go away and think about it? Did you need help with the punctuation and spelling after all its a big word for a twelve year old

oh and Kaiser try the latest build its very responsive I am running it with on Windows 7 Q6600 and 2 gigs of ram and using WMP classic as its movie player

dingdong1234567

Auvers wrote: »

wow an intelligent well thought out comment, how long did it take you to come up with that? did you have to go away and think about it? Did you need help with the punctuation and spelling after all its a big word for a twelve year old

Ha yes thats the best laugh i've had in ages......for a twelve year old. Its to easy mate, to easy.

I hadn't time to check the 'punctuation and spelling' as i was to busy riding you auld one! BLLLLLEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHH!

Auvers

what was that? I cant hear you through my ignore list.

oh yeah your post has been reported for personal abuse

SouperComputer

Folks, keep the "fanboyism" and insults for another board please. Banning stick is warmed up.

SouperComputer

Dancing_Priest, in my experience, irrespective of software version or hardware, Mediaportal has always been less responsive and less stable than MCE on an equivilant machine. That said it is a lot more customisable.

The good news is that really you dont have to choose. You can install Mediaportal on an existing Windows XP, XP MCE or Vista setup. If you are on a budget, you could download the Windows 7 RC. This gets you a "free" OS until next march. Pretty nifty if you ask me.

My advice is try em all out. HTPC's and media are very personal, everyone needs are different. SageTV would be worth a look at too,.

Tea_Bag

Dancing_Priest wrote: »

Secondly I would like to use an ipod touch as a remote and would like to know if anyone has had any experience of this?

Remembered this article in lifehacker and thought it'd be of some use to u..

http://lifehacker.com/400235/turn-your-iphone-or-ipod-touch-into-a-multi+room-wireless-music-remote