Tivo or MCE 2005 w/ Extender?

My 2 cents would be go with a hdtv tivo. For many reasons.


1. You get dual hdtv tuners with hd-tivo only a single hdtv tuner with mce.


2. and most important it has been said you cannot stream hdtv content to the extenders only on the main media center pc. It says so on microsofts website.


I use media center strictly for cd and dvd playback. (ease of use for the wife). I will buy an extender so i can access my library on my back porch. I love my hd-tivo I had hopes of mce 2005 replacing it, but not going to happen.


pluckyhd

Quote:
Not to be a pain, but MCE includes a full operating system AND a media center software package, so you really can't say SageTV is "half the price." In fact, MCE is almost half the price of XP Pro with 99% of the features, plus media center functionality (or similarly it is only about $40 more than XP Home, with many more features). You can pay $370 for SageTV plus XP Pro, or you can pay $130 for MCE (less than half the price!). Also, the media center remote is $35 (including IR receiver and blaster) and you can control everything out-of-the-box; the SageTV remote plus blaster is about $80.


Sure, the extender is $250, which is not my cup of tea. I hooked-up the MCE video output to an FM modulator and distribute both audio and video through RG-6 cable throughout the house. The modulator is $40 at radio shack and now I have audio and video everywhere. Since the tuner and video cards take most of the load, the processor runs at a very low utilization. Best of all, you avoid that nasty $300 Tivo charge for the program guide. Good luck.