New build : MCE now or wait for Vista?

[Dommo]

I appreciate this may be a silly question, but I'll lay out my plans in the hope for some advice.

I've got an old (well, old ish) PC that I want to upgrade and use as a media centre, connected to my LG LCD. I've also got £80 of PC World vouchers that I was going to spend on a HD-DVD for the 360, but then it died.

My plan was therefore to spend the £80 on MCE and build this PC to become a media centre. Quite why I need one I'm not too sure, but seeing as now the xbox is dead I'm DVD-less, and I like gadgets, my mind started down this route.

Question is - should I go out and buy MCE now or wait until January and get vista? Bizarrely I can't find an upgrade cd for vista, will they release one?

Following on a bit further: With the right amount of disk space, can I put all my DVD's/VHS onto the PC. This would save having to store them and sift through them. Is it legal to do that?

Cheers,

[RSK21]

Hello mate,

If you were planning on using the £80 of PC World vouchers you'd be out of luck in terms of buying a standalone copy of MCE as this is only sold on an OEM basis meaning PC World do not have retail copies to sell in the same way that they do XP Home or Pro.

I would assume that in January PCWorld will be selling retail copies of the various Vista flavours and that this will be available in either standalone or upgrade vesrions.

RSK

[paulm187]

I appreciate this may be a silly question, but I'll lay out my plans in the hope for some advice.

I've got an old (well, old ish) PC that I want to upgrade and use as a media centre, connected to my LG LCD. I've also got £80 of PC World vouchers that I was going to spend on a HD-DVD for the 360, but then it died.

My plan was therefore to spend the £80 on MCE and build this PC to become a media centre. Quite why I need one I'm not too sure, but seeing as now the xbox is dead I'm DVD-less, and I like gadgets, my mind started down this route.

Question is - should I go out and buy MCE now or wait until January and get vista? Bizarrely I can't find an upgrade cd for vista, will they release one?

Following on a bit further: With the right amount of disk space, can I put all my DVD's/VHS onto the PC. This would save having to store them and sift through them. Is it legal to do that?

Cheers,

You would need to beef up that PC to run Vista as a media center, especially in HD. You can either put that money towards hardware and install a copy of Vista Rc2 which is free to download or buy MCE 2005 from an OEM reseller for £80 as opposed to £299 for Vista Premium. To be honest Vista doesn't give any compelling reason to upgrade at the moment especially for Media Center use.

[RSK21]

As for your question re archiving the films which you already own do a google for an application called MyMovies for MCE, sorrty can'r remember the exact URL off the top of my head.

It's a terrific application and for me it's one of the best things in MCE - And it's free !

RSK

[Dommo]

Thanks for the advice guys... the only thing going for the old pc is it has 1.5Gb of RAM, other wise just a normal P4 1.8ghz, generic sound/video etc.

What about a change of direction? I've got an Xbox 360 so could I use that coupled with my current PC running XP (Might have to install MCE to get videos I think). That would certainly save the expense of building a new pc and as it's not in the lounge, I don't need a snazzy case!

Spec of current PC is as follows:

AMD Athlon 64 3000+
512Mb RAM
200Gb Hard Drive (IDE connection)

I'm thinking I might have to pay some attention to the RAM. Would there be any benefit of using a SATA drive instead?

[daern]

I've got an old (well, old ish) PC that I want to upgrade and use as a media centre, connected to my LG LCD. I've also got £80 of PC World vouchers that I was going to spend on a HD-DVD for the 360, but then it died.

"Old", you say...
Question is - should I go out and buy MCE now or wait until January and get vista? Bizarrely I can't find an upgrade cd for vista, will they release one?

IME, Vista makes a pretty bad upgrade for any PC hardware that is less than the latest and greatest. The hardware requirements are extensive and specific components (specifically video cards) require much high base specifications than XP does, even to do the same things.

I'm now using Vista (Ultimate) on my primary MCE box and I think it's a notable improvement over MCE2005. That said, on the same hardware, Vista runs like a dog and I've had to upgrade the video card just to get acceptable performance from the video playback in Vista.

So there you have it. MCE2005 will do pretty much everything that Vista MCE will, but not quite as prettily :-) Not sure what MS are going to do as far as retail upgrade deals go, but all will no doubt become clear nearly January...

Daern

[UncleFester]

What about a change of direction? I've got an Xbox 360 so could I use that coupled with my current PC running XP (Might have to install MCE to get videos I think). That would certainly save the expense of building a new pc and as it's not in the lounge, I don't need a snazzy case!

Spec of current PC is as follows:

AMD Athlon 64 3000+
512Mb RAM
200Gb Hard Drive (IDE connection)

I'm thinking I might have to pay some attention to the RAM. Would there be any benefit of using a SATA drive instead?


Dommo,
My recommendation would be for you to try the XBOX route initially. You could then see what it's like to run media through it via another PC - and then you could look at upgrading as necessary.

You would only need to upgrade your current PC to (free) Windows Media Player 11 (Which has Windows Media Connect) to allow XP Pro to serve an XBOX.

After you've had a play with it your logical upgrade path could start with beefing up the existing PC by installing more RAM.

Take small steps for now. Suck it and see. And don't spend any more cash then you really need to.

Hope this helps

[Dommo]

cool - it does seem to make more sense... I'll have a play when I get the xbox back from repair, see how it goes...

[danvitale]

If you were planning on using the £80 of PC World vouchers you'd be out of luck in terms of buying a standalone copy of MCE as this is only sold on an OEM basis meaning PC World do not have retail copies to sell in the same way that they do XP Home or Pro.
RSK

However if you go to kellkoo you can buy XP MCE 2005 fully licensed 3CD version for £80.

[Br0ken]

I've had both mce05 and vista mce. Vista as an operating system is great but if thats youre only real use for that pc then its not worth having over mce05 in all honesty.