jonshaw_uk Posted February 8, 2005 Share Posted February 8, 2005 Hi all im looking for some advice - ive just bought a 42" plasma screen tv and mounted it on the wall and it looks awesome for the football on a Sunday afternoon. Now for the help i need, I want to build a media centre Pc and link it to my other main PC upstairs. I got the cable and network card I was thinking of getting porbably just an, Athlon XP or Sempron 512 Mb Ram 120 Gb Hard Disk I will be wanting a tv capture card as well and i also need a graphics card (preferably with DVI) How can i get sound from the PC through the speakers which are conencted to the plasma (wired in like hifi speakers) Anybody got any ideas or built a media centre pc? cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted February 8, 2005 Share Posted February 8, 2005 Get an xbox modded with xbox media centre.... Much cheaper... and much better resolution to the tv than a pc Gav Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted February 8, 2005 Share Posted February 8, 2005 Remember pc's graphic cards are designed to display on a monitor.. which a tvout just interpolates and then spits out... The xbox was ALWAYS designed to go on a tv, and as such is so much sharper / clearer and richer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonshaw_uk Posted February 8, 2005 Author Share Posted February 8, 2005 how much is xbox media centre, and where can i get it from? as my mate has an xbox that i could borrow for a while The other reason i wanted a PC was so i could use it to surf the web and stuff in the living room Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted February 8, 2005 Share Posted February 8, 2005 A modded xbox is around 200 odd quid with an upgraded hard drive... xbox media centre is a free aplication... and since the xbox uses usb for its connectors you could use a keyboard with it as well http://www.xboxmediacenter.de/ http://www.xbox-chipz.co.uk/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barry Posted February 8, 2005 Share Posted February 8, 2005 I have Media Center 2004, but at the moment I only use it for music, I'm after a small form factor TV card if anyone knows where I can get one!? Or, a sff sound card with 32bit capability (Media center will only run on 32bit). I've got mine going through a normal TV, but sound out of a Soundblaster live card into a surround sound system. Got the Microsoft Remote control too, is a pretty cool 'toy!'. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonshaw_uk Posted February 8, 2005 Author Share Posted February 8, 2005 sorry if it sounds dumb but could you surf the web on X-Box linked to the net? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barry Posted February 8, 2005 Share Posted February 8, 2005 Jon, Also, when you say you want to connect them together, what do you mean? You will need to have Media Center on both PC's as it will not allow you to load it up if you are using XP's remote desktop. If you had it on both pc's, you could always share a drive and get both PC's to look in that location for the music and vid files!? Not sure about xbox and the web. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonshaw_uk Posted February 8, 2005 Author Share Posted February 8, 2005 i want to put a pc in my living room with XP pro on and link it via cross over cable to my main pc and then send data back and fore and share the internet conenction. I dont really want to use Windows media centre i only want to be able to use the pc as a media centre Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Digsy Posted February 8, 2005 Share Posted February 8, 2005 Hi all im looking for some advice - ive just bought a 42" plasma screen tv and mounted it on the wall and it looks awesome for the football on a Sunday afternoon. Now for the help i need, I want to build a media centre Pc and link it to my other main PC upstairs. I got the cable and network card I was thinking of getting porbably just an, Athlon XP or Sempron 512 Mb Ram 120 Gb Hard Disk I will be wanting a tv capture card as well and i also need a graphics card (preferably with DVI) How can i get sound from the PC through the speakers which are conencted to the plasma (wired in like hifi speakers) Anybody got any ideas or built a media centre pc? cheersMy PC is fully ingetrated into my home cinema and 42" plasma screen. I don't use my PC as a media centre but I could if I wanted to. Any of the IT bods on here can help you with the PC stuff, but as for linking it all together to the screen, can you tell us a bit more about the plasma screen you have bought? Firstly, plasmas have a native resolution the same way that TFT monitors do. If you try to run the screen at a higher res than native, then the electronics inside the screen are forced to drop pixels out. My screen has a horizontal resolution of 1024 pixels native but I actually drive it at 1360 so as to get a true 16:9 "widescreen" desktop (1360x768). So first off you need to get a graphics card that will support a widescreen resolution. Driving the screen like this I literally lose every 4th pixel, which can make some fine fonts hard to read because you lose the odd vertical stroke in a "T" for example. Under WIndows 98 I changed the screen fonts to make them fatter so that this was minimised, but when I switched to XP Pro I found that using Cleartype pretty much eliminated the problem altogether. What kind of inputs do you have for your screen? I'm assuming at least one DVI input because you said you needes a graphics card with DVI out. If you can get a 15 pin VGA card for your plasma then this will look perfectly fine. My PC is plumbed into my screen using a 5m VGA cable into one o fits two VGA sockets. As for sound, you should be able to plug your sound card output straight into the sound input on the screen. If the screen has built in speakers then it sould have an input jack for sound. However, if you are going to be using your PC as a media centre I'd suggest getting a 5.1 sound card and running the outputs through an amp with 5.1 line level inputs - at least for the centre and rear channels. Need to know a lot more about the sound capabilities of your screen, though. You've said it has at least two speakers built in. What about the centre channel? Does it have a surround sound decoder built in? I run my sound out of my PC and into my 5.1 amp, which drives my speakers directly. I don't have any speakers built into my screen at all. If you want a TV capture card to grab video from a composite source (you don't say what the source would be) I would suggest getting something that does the encoding in hardware rather than software. MPEG capture cards are quite common in PC World but make sure you get one that does the encoding on the card rather than using a software codec, as many of the cheaper ones do. You don't mention what you want to do with the captured video, but if you want to edit it then I would strongly suggest buying a DV bridge from a company like Canopus. These can capture from an analogue source but in DV (digicam) format (5:1 compression) and do all the encoding in hardware so they are lightning fast and don't load up your PC during a capture. The files will be MUCH bigger than MPEG, but DV is about the best format for editing. My Canopus ADVC50 has captured 2 hours of video straight off with only 2 dropped frames and no lip-syncing problems at all. Hope this helps. If you need any more pointers, let me know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonshaw_uk Posted February 8, 2005 Author Share Posted February 8, 2005 thanks for the reply digsy, the plasma has VGA input, 4 scart sockets, DVI, s video, 2 sets of RCA connections and an ariel input. All i want to be able to do i play dvds through the PC on the tv and surf the net occasionally, and basically use it as a giant jukebox. I was just thinking of getting a capture card to capture things of sky digital and trasnfer them to the harddrive of the PC (just like recording a video) not really bothered about having encoding on the card as i have a seperate Pc which does loads of encoding. I just wasnt sure about how i would get sound from the screen when playing a movie from the PC. I dont have to use DVI just thought that i would explore this path, i can use the VGA without any probs. Cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Digsy Posted February 8, 2005 Share Posted February 8, 2005 Jesus! That's a LOT of connectors! Are they in the back of the screen or in a separate tuner box? I'm assuming the RCA connectors are for the sound inputs? The TV tuner and SCART inputs will carry their own sound inputs but you need to have a look at whether you have an aux sound input that can be selected when your video source is the PC. The screen's instruction book should tell you what you need to know. Are you going to pass through the SKY signal straight into your screen or just plumb SKY into your PC and watch it in a capture window? For the former I'd recommend using an RBG scart connection into the screen and a composite SCART to 3x phono into your PC. If you have a PC that can already do reliable video encoding then cool. I experimented with this for weeks but coud not fins a software codec that sould produce the quality I wanted with no dropped frames at full PAL resolution. An video editing forum pointed me at the Canopus DV bridge and I've never looked back ;-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MONKEYmark Posted February 9, 2005 Share Posted February 9, 2005 how much is the windows media center and does it come with remote control or can you buy it seperate. i just installed media center on my spare comp. you can buy tv cards cheap now. some of them have also got Digital radio on them too. you can use media center with mouse too. just was thinking if you could buy remote seperate. seems like a good idea to keep all your music and films together. will have to look into it. intresting to read of your set ups. internet sharing is cool too. :alien: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael Posted February 9, 2005 Share Posted February 9, 2005 Any use? http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=318&sec=1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MONKEYmark Posted February 9, 2005 Share Posted February 9, 2005 just found these while searching. the remote is cheap at £22 and a usefull 2.2 gig usb memory drive windows media center remote control http://specialreserve.co.uk/Microsoft_Remote_2774_r.html 2.2 gig memory USB drive http://specialreserve.co.uk/22_GB_Microdrive_6178_r.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonshaw_uk Posted February 9, 2005 Author Share Posted February 9, 2005 Digsy - your right it is a lot of connectors, they are in a seperate tuner box which is what i wanted when buying the plasma, as i wanted just the screen on the wall and didnt want to see any cables. So the mrs dad built a fake chimmney breast and mounted the screen on it with all the cables in it and the dvd, ps2, digi box and stuff in a built in shelving unit in the bottom. mcanny thats an awesome product from dlink i will look to see if i can find one in the uk as it might be a good buy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael Posted February 9, 2005 Share Posted February 9, 2005 mcanny thats an awesome product from dlink i will look to see if i can find one in the uk as it might be a good buy Head to eBay, I've seen them go for silly money on there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonshaw_uk Posted February 9, 2005 Author Share Posted February 9, 2005 will do cheers mate Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burna Posted February 9, 2005 Share Posted February 9, 2005 Hi all im looking for some advice - ive just bought a 42" plasma screen tv and mounted it on the wall and it looks awesome for the football on a Sunday afternoon. Now for the help i need, I want to build a media centre Pc and link it to my other main PC upstairs. I got the cable and network card I was thinking of getting porbably just an, Athlon XP or Sempron 512 Mb Ram 120 Gb Hard Disk I will be wanting a tv capture card as well and i also need a graphics card (preferably with DVI) How can i get sound from the PC through the speakers which are conencted to the plasma (wired in like hifi speakers) Anybody got any ideas or built a media centre pc? cheers Built one a year ago, still running fine, in fact I use it more than my desktop pc at home now. Are you also going to use it for downloading movies? If you've got a 5.1 sound setup alot of films have it encoded with them now. If you want any help or advice just ask me, I could run through every single option you could go for but each system is personal preference. Movies, music and internet is mainly what mine is used for, got a capture card ATI Radeon 9800 pro installed but still havent bothered to setup the system as a hard drive recorder. Burna. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonshaw_uk Posted February 9, 2005 Author Share Posted February 9, 2005 i *cough* am already into the movies thing with 5.1 surround sound *cough* ati radeon 9800 pro would be fine - im not into hardware encoding. I just mainly want to be able to surf the web from time to time without having to go upstairs and faff about - cos by the time i go upstairs i forgot what i wanted to look for - i also want to be able to capture the footy and things to the harddrive of the pc so i can watch later - i dont have a video recorder anymore and dont want to buy a dvd recorder as i already have a pioneer 108 drive in my pc what specs are your pc Burna? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burna Posted February 10, 2005 Share Posted February 10, 2005 [quote name=jonshaw_uk what specs are your pc Burna?[/quote] It's been a year since I built it so I tell you as much as I can remember: Intel Pentium 4 2.6ghz 800FSB SKT478 512k Sapphire All In Wonder Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB ( Can capture just havent bothered yet ) 2 x Crucial 512 DDR400 PC3200 CL=3 Memory Module Motherboard, ASUS P4C800 SKT478 SATA 8x AGP 800 FSB DDR400 Memory, Sound,LAN Intel Hyper-Threading Samsung SpinPoint P80 160gb SATA Hard Drive TRUST 5.1 Optical Sound Card Itemd listed below are from http://www.quietpc.com/uk/index.php as I wanted it real quiet for the living room. Super Flower Cooler P4 S478 CNPS7000-ALCU AcoustiCase C6607B Black Super Midi Tower 2 x AcoustiFan: 120mm Case Fan, Temperature Sensi Q-Technology Ultra-Quiet ATX PSU 350W, 120mm Gyration Ultra Cordless Optical Keyboard and mouse ( Very nice bit of kit ) Runs like a dream, the only thing I would say is that im considering putting another Spinpoint 160GB hardrive in to boost storage space because capturing can suck up space faster than a TT can petrol! Also I get my broadband (for internet and downloading with DC++ etc...) to the pc by wireless from a linkysys wireless router located by the desktop pc upstairs. I think I've covered everything, let me know if you need any more info Burna Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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