Captain Gadget
9th Jun 2009, 08:54
Tomorrow, my ancient, inherited single-LNB satellite TV installation is to be upgraded to an Octo LNB with the cabling directed as follows:
2 x to living room
2 x to study
1 x to each of 4 bedrooms
I have been forced into this by the imminent arrival of a loft insulation man who is going to fill my attic with about 40cm of fluffy stuff and make continued access to the roof space very difficult - if not impossible.
I'm currently using a secondhand Sky box in the living room and this will have to continue for the near term as the Financial Controller (aka Mrs Gadget) will not sanction further spend on entz gear at present; however, there's no harm in looking, and - determined as I am not to further line Mr Murdoch's pockets - I'm now contemplating whether to go down the Freesat+ route in the living room, or down the Media Center route in the study with an extender (probably the Linksys DMA2200) in the living room.
My PC is a Dell Inspiron 530 with 2.4GHz Core 2 Quad CPU and 4GB RAM, running Vista Ultimate SP1 - so no slouch. It already has a Hauppauge HVR1200 Freeview/Analogue TV card - but Freeview is patchy where I live, hence the investment in satellite.
I have several questions:
1. I have obtained (but not yet installed) the Media Center TV Pack, but I have heard mixed reports about its usability on established systems. Of course, I could recover the PC to a 'clean install' of Vista Ultimate SP1, but if I am going to go this far would I be better off installing Windows 7 RC with its version of Media Center?
2. Supplementary to 1. above: apparently the protocol (H264?) required to receive BBC HD was in the TV Pack beta, but dropped from the final version. Did it make it into the W7 version of Media Center?
3. Any recommendations as to PC cards? If I went down the Media Center route, I would want 2 satellite tuners to give a full PVR capability. Having a Hauppauge card already, I am drawn to the Nova-S2, but what do you guys think about alternatives? (I would prefer HD capability, but perhaps only on 1 card).
4. Anyone got any experience of/comments on using the Linksys DMA2200 Media Center Extender for streaming TV over a wireless N network?
Thanks in advance (your cue, Parapunter!)
Gadget :ok:
2 x to living room
2 x to study
1 x to each of 4 bedrooms
I have been forced into this by the imminent arrival of a loft insulation man who is going to fill my attic with about 40cm of fluffy stuff and make continued access to the roof space very difficult - if not impossible.
I'm currently using a secondhand Sky box in the living room and this will have to continue for the near term as the Financial Controller (aka Mrs Gadget) will not sanction further spend on entz gear at present; however, there's no harm in looking, and - determined as I am not to further line Mr Murdoch's pockets - I'm now contemplating whether to go down the Freesat+ route in the living room, or down the Media Center route in the study with an extender (probably the Linksys DMA2200) in the living room.
My PC is a Dell Inspiron 530 with 2.4GHz Core 2 Quad CPU and 4GB RAM, running Vista Ultimate SP1 - so no slouch. It already has a Hauppauge HVR1200 Freeview/Analogue TV card - but Freeview is patchy where I live, hence the investment in satellite.
I have several questions:
1. I have obtained (but not yet installed) the Media Center TV Pack, but I have heard mixed reports about its usability on established systems. Of course, I could recover the PC to a 'clean install' of Vista Ultimate SP1, but if I am going to go this far would I be better off installing Windows 7 RC with its version of Media Center?
2. Supplementary to 1. above: apparently the protocol (H264?) required to receive BBC HD was in the TV Pack beta, but dropped from the final version. Did it make it into the W7 version of Media Center?
3. Any recommendations as to PC cards? If I went down the Media Center route, I would want 2 satellite tuners to give a full PVR capability. Having a Hauppauge card already, I am drawn to the Nova-S2, but what do you guys think about alternatives? (I would prefer HD capability, but perhaps only on 1 card).
4. Anyone got any experience of/comments on using the Linksys DMA2200 Media Center Extender for streaming TV over a wireless N network?
Thanks in advance (your cue, Parapunter!)
Gadget :ok: