Is my PC good enough to use with MCE?

I'm wanting to sort myself out a media centre pc, but it's all a bit costy at the moment, was thinking of upgrading my current PC, putting a 200gb hdd in it and 1gb of ram, it is currently running on xp pro, and the cpu is an amd duron 1100mhz. here's what i'd like to do.


Right, now the PC is in my bedroom, and alot of my programs I download and usually burn them to a cd-r to watch downstairs, but with 360 coming out on dec 2nd, I thought it'd be a good idea to sort my pc out if i can. I do not have a hi-def telly so would only be streaming standard def programs, so i'm hoping to have no trouble with that.

I do already have a TV card, which takes RF, composite and s-video in. So it's handy for my sky+ as i currently have that connected with s-video and am happy with it. it's just i'm reading MCE tends to be a bit funny with tv cards, but if it doesn't work as i said im not to bothered its mainly for streaming my downloaded programs to 360 in living room on the 32" Widescreen CRT.

Do u think it would be good enough to use as above with an upgrade of a 200gb hdd and 1gb of ram?

Anyone have any suggestions?

 

Well, it is doubtful to be honest, as you say MCE is very fussy and you have to have a compatible grahics card, tv card, dvd codec and MCE approved drivers at the very least.

Here is the list.

If you want to save money, another option is to use your existing pc, and a modded xbox running xbox media center (xbmc) you could then stream your recorded tv to the xbox, and would save money on the hardware / software upgrade to an MCE machine and xbox 360... you just miss out on the ability to stream live tv.

 

you sound like you know what your on about, if you'v built a mce machine could u please list all the parts, as it's something i'd like to venture into in the near future

 

Yeah do as Lisa says, don't bother with a 360 for streaming. It is going to have very limited format support (rumoured) so use a normal xbox which will play just about everything.

It's highly unlikely that the 360 will support formats like Divx/Xvid etc.

 

I agree a regular modded xbox is probably the best value and best option.
Your CPU is fine, memory, hdd etc but you would need to purchase another TV card and your graphics card must be compatible also if not again you will need a graphics card.
When I say your CPU is fine it will be if you use hardware decoding which makes your graphcis card do all the mpeg2 decoding i.e watching TV and DVD etc.

 

interesting, seems this would be good, my xbox is already softmodded with the splinter cell save, i'v got the unleash x dashboard, what else would i need to do?

 

This definetley sounds like a question for Lisa as I *think* she softmods. I am unable to help as my Media Terminals .... er ... i mean Xbox's are hard modded.

 

Basically you need to connect the xbox to your pc via a crossover ethernet cable, or via a router and ftp into it using some ftp software such as flash fxp. Then it is a case of copying the xbmc files on to the xbox hard drive.

 

I'm sure you are, you just had no need to try

 

Aaah, yes of course, that's what I meant

 

You just need to get the XBMC from torrent and FTP it to your xbox in your apps folder then away you go !

 

Not entirely true

You will also need to edit the XBMCConfig.XML (bad memory, but it should be obvious) but, this file is self explanatory ... you will see when you open it.

For locations to get the program, check out www.xboxmediacenter.com

 

Well actually it is all XBMC versions I have installed have network browse enabled so as long as your shared folders are on default this means anyone on same same subnet LAN can access the folders because defualt access on MCE folders is "everyone".
I you want a short cut direct to a folder then yes you need to edit the config file with path and ip etc.

 

and xbmc home directory?