PannyAdams
Established Member
I am about to take the plunge and by MCE 2005 OEM - Mainly because the UI needs to be family friendly.
My PC currently has an ATI 9200 SE graphics card - which although not explicitly listed on the MCE compatible list I beleive works.
What would I need to make MCE capture programs from my SKY+ box (As the internal drive gets full and also I'd like to archive whole series and watch them in one sitting)? I was looking at the Black Gold card will that do the trick? I recon I probably don't need a digital tuner card? I'm quite big on quality (until proice starts to get exponentially large) Also does MCE do anything clever (like TIVO) and control the SKY box with an IR blaster? So I could set programs to record through the MCE EPG?
Also, how friendly is MCE to image improvement software like Powerstrip or Dscaler? I'd like to use it to drive my plasma through DVI or VGA - any to scale and handle frequency changes between NTSC and PAL.
Finally, what is the best solution for ripping my favourite DVDs onto the HTPC and using MCE as a media server for them? I think I've read that MCE doesn't do this out of the box but there are a few plugin solutions?
Any help would be great!
Thanks
Panny
My PC currently has an ATI 9200 SE graphics card - which although not explicitly listed on the MCE compatible list I beleive works.
What would I need to make MCE capture programs from my SKY+ box (As the internal drive gets full and also I'd like to archive whole series and watch them in one sitting)? I was looking at the Black Gold card will that do the trick? I recon I probably don't need a digital tuner card? I'm quite big on quality (until proice starts to get exponentially large) Also does MCE do anything clever (like TIVO) and control the SKY box with an IR blaster? So I could set programs to record through the MCE EPG?
Also, how friendly is MCE to image improvement software like Powerstrip or Dscaler? I'd like to use it to drive my plasma through DVI or VGA - any to scale and handle frequency changes between NTSC and PAL.
Finally, what is the best solution for ripping my favourite DVDs onto the HTPC and using MCE as a media server for them? I think I've read that MCE doesn't do this out of the box but there are a few plugin solutions?
Any help would be great!
Thanks
Panny