Building a Vista HTPC system

[johnnyhungus]

I am teetering on the edge of building a new HTPC box but I would like to run Vista on it. I have an MSDN licence and have got Premium ready to go, in fact I really like what they have done with the GUI for Vista media centre, so I am looking forward to running it real soon.

Is there any certified hardware available yet? DVB tuners, HDTV cards, etc?

Has anybody got a successfully working full HTPC up and running yet or is it a little too early?

Any advice would be welcome, thanks.

[Spacecat]

its pretty easy, i ran the RC2 for a couple of weeks no problems, nice overlays in terms of guide.

some extra info etc , dark blue color scheme.

i went back to my main mce2005 box as the piccy quality isnt quite as good yet

[rm010]

I've just rebuilt my HTPC with Vista Ultimate - it works just fine, single tuner Blackgold DVB-T works perfectly...no HDTV cards to test it with, but so far it's good. I think I need 2GB of RAM vs the 1GB that's in there at the moment, but it basically just works.

[delanoster]

I'm using Vista Ultimate wthout any problems too. I use a Technotrend DVB-S card for live TV and it all works really well.

I also use an Xbox 360 as an extender with no problems at all.

The only downside so far is the lack of a decent Nvidia video driver making 50Hz output difficult.

[johnnyhungus]

its pretty easy, i ran the RC2 for a couple of weeks no problems, nice overlays in terms of guide.

some extra info etc , dark blue color scheme.

i went back to my main mce2005 box as the piccy quality isnt quite as good yet

I have been running Vista since the first Beta, so have seen it evolve somewhat.

This is the scary bit for me - will my hardware work on it?

I think I will buy another hard drive to test it!

[johnnyhungus]

I've just rebuilt my HTPC with Vista Ultimate - it works just fine, single tuner Blackgold DVB-T works perfectly...no HDTV cards to test it with, but so far it's good. I think I need 2GB of RAM vs the 1GB that's in there at the moment, but it basically just works.

Good to know that the Blackgold card works, I have two in my HTPC.

Did you have any driver issues with this?

Definitely need 2GB RAM to run Vista smoothly - I am running it on a P4 3GHZ with 1GB RAM at the moment (not my HTPC) and it does a fair bit of crunching on the hard drive!

[tim_kay]

2gig is advised but not essential for the average HTPC, the gadget displays high memory usage using both 1gig/2gig solutions. Hauppage still limited in driver support for Vista which is very annoying!