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Thats half your problem right there, is your running beta/release canidate OS, run MCE 2005 with rollup2 and it'll be damn great.
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Not sure what you mean here, Vbox makes some awsome OTA hd tuners, their new 164E dual OTA tuner is suppose to be awsome.
Also Nvidia DualTV, or the Avermedia Purity 500 are some fantasic dual SD tuner cards.
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Again that is the major downfall of using beta OS, get MCE and you'll be able to run any resolution you want to with ease.
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Get a good splitter and you can use the antenna for both the TV and the HTPC. Thats what I and many others do.
I personally notice a difference in HD OTA and HD on cable, its compressed and pixelated on cable.
The A180 can only do one or the other, SD or HD it can't do both.
I'd recomend getting one of the new purity SD cards Avermedia has, they have the single tuner, the purity 250, or the dual tuner the purity 500. The purity cards have the same chipsets that the Nvidia Dualtv tuner card has and is one of the best SD tuners out there right now.
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I too have the DVR from my cable providor (comcast) the only down sides are that the user interface SUCKS, like majorly sucks. Doing seasonal records are crappy, also if say you already have a recording on your hard drive, and there is a re-run, the box records it anways, where as with MCE it skips that recording if it is already on the hdd.
Also the comcast box HDD is small, really small. only 120gigs, thats only good enough for maybe 7 - 8 shows in hd and a a couple in SD.
With my MCE machine i've got two 500gig hdd's in raid so I've got damn near a terabyte of disc space for pvring.
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Dude as I said your using VISTA, its not production quality yet, there is more and better support in XP Pro and MCE in terms of drivers, overscan compensation, applications, ect....
Move to a better OS first and I think you'll be seeing the light.
Granted it is frusttrating not being able to record cable or satalite HD, but all the other advantages with a HTPC just out weight that right now.
I have MCE 2005 install, my movie 2 plugin, running theatertek and I have barely tweaked anything and it runs flawlessly.
I think the biggest miss conception in this forum is you have to "tweak" to get a good HTPC, and that just ins't true at all.
Granted you can "tweak" with FFdshow to push that quality just a tab bit higher (in which I do) but you absolutely don't need to do that if you have a mondrn video cad these days. More and more of the features that FFdshow did when it first came out are now being built into the hardware of video cads and drivers and mpeg decoders (IE Nvidia Purevideo) and it looks damn good.
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Great system, much more powerfull than What I am currently running. Mine is a 3.2ghz Prescott P4, OC"d to 3.8ghz 2gigs of ram, and an nvidia 6600GT AGP. and I get everything I need out of it for HTPC use.
- Josh
| Originally Posted by HTPCnewbie You know, I have not been a member long and I’ve only built one HTPC (which I do love) but in the process of buying the parts for my new HTPC/gaming rig (and spending the most I’ve ever spent on a custom built PC) I almost feel like giving up. I have a few concerns and/or frustrations with this next HTPC. Sit with me for a bit so I can explain… First, the OS…I’m a Vista RC1 beta tester and I have it running on my laptop (1.73Ghz Pentium M, 1.25GB DDR2-533, ATI X700, 15.4 widescreen) and I must say that all the hype about it being “slow†so far in about a month of testing is unfounded. It’s as fast as it ever was if not a bit faster. Anyway, while it’s not perfect (I’ve run into a few errors…nothing Earth shaking but certainly annoying at times) I like it enough and like the new up and coming media center bits to be decided on using it as the OS for my next HTPC. |
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| The frustration comes into the lack of hardware, good hardware, out there when only a handful of companies make quality parts (analog/HD turners mainly). |
Also Nvidia DualTV, or the Avermedia Purity 500 are some fantasic dual SD tuner cards.
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| Then, it’s the frustration of matching TV resolutions to output the best signal (yes, it’s usable but keep reading) and fitting it to the screen correctly. Since most of the time you have to have a custom resolution setup it makes me wonder if a stand lone product would not be the easier and most effective thing to use as a PVR/DVD Player to give the best quality viewing. |
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| Another issue I’m hitting is that I was planning on buying the AVerTVHD A180 and attaching an ATSC Antenna to it to record local TV in HD, but isn’t that antenna better left for my actual TV (DLP Samsung HLS4666W) for local HD since it’s better than the Cable companies local HD? Is the quality that much better, or is it a small difference making this a none issue to worry about. Then, I could attach my S-Video to the A180 to record standard TV and the HD Antenna to the A180 to record local HD…can I even have to single types coming in and record from both? |
I personally notice a difference in HD OTA and HD on cable, its compressed and pixelated on cable.
The A180 can only do one or the other, SD or HD it can't do both.
I'd recomend getting one of the new purity SD cards Avermedia has, they have the single tuner, the purity 250, or the dual tuner the purity 500. The purity cards have the same chipsets that the Nvidia Dualtv tuner card has and is one of the best SD tuners out there right now.
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| My brother uses the cable companies HD-PVR for only $5 a month (can record cable HD, local HD, etc) and does not have to worry about matching resolutions, spending money on decoders, and all the rest of the work involved with perfecting our HTPC. |
Also the comcast box HDD is small, really small. only 120gigs, thats only good enough for maybe 7 - 8 shows in hd and a a couple in SD.
With my MCE machine i've got two 500gig hdd's in raid so I've got damn near a terabyte of disc space for pvring.
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| So, after the honeymoon with my HTPC I’m wondering if all of the work is even worth it. Cable companies really suck and media related hardware in the PC world moves SLOWWWWWW…mainly because of all the hands in the pot wanting control and limiting our control. Is it worth it folks? I’m on a HTPC down right now…frustrated with all the red tape, and wondering if it’s worth the effort. Lack of OS support for this and that, quality hardware limited, cable companies wanting to control everything to feed even more money to their pockets, and tweaking with no end to perfect our HTPC’s are just frustrating me right now. |
Move to a better OS first and I think you'll be seeing the light.
Granted it is frusttrating not being able to record cable or satalite HD, but all the other advantages with a HTPC just out weight that right now.
I have MCE 2005 install, my movie 2 plugin, running theatertek and I have barely tweaked anything and it runs flawlessly.
I think the biggest miss conception in this forum is you have to "tweak" to get a good HTPC, and that just ins't true at all.
Granted you can "tweak" with FFdshow to push that quality just a tab bit higher (in which I do) but you absolutely don't need to do that if you have a mondrn video cad these days. More and more of the features that FFdshow did when it first came out are now being built into the hardware of video cads and drivers and mpeg decoders (IE Nvidia Purevideo) and it looks damn good.
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| FYI, here are the parts for my next and I hope not last HTPC (remember, it’s a gaming rig also): Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13Ghz (maybe OC or not in the future?) BFG 7900 GS OC PCI-x16 (2) SATAII 160GB Western Digital HD’s in RAID 0 (320GB total) Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 motherboard Corsair DDR2-800 Cas 4-4-4-12 Dual Channel 2GB AVerTVHD A180 HD Tuner card Custom PC case (ongoing…might be a hassle since parts are few and far between) So far that’s it, power supply, nVidia DVD decoder, HDTV indoor antenna, and parts to build the custom PC case remain. Sorry if I’m rambling, I just might need some encouragement from the good people here on why I should keep building HTPC’s. Is it worth it guys/gals?  |
- Josh
