It is now the 5th birthday of Windows Media Center and Brandon Leblanc has a great post on his Velocity MicroSystem and Ed Bott has one on his. I will put up my current system later this week. I will also put together a series of posts on the construction of our home theatre/great room dubbed by my kids as the “Audition“. If you are a Media Center enthusiast there are a few good deals on the web to look for. Sony has a $200 price drop on their popular DVD changer for Media Center the VAIO VGP-XL1B3, which seems to be on sale again at Amazon.com for $199 here.(Affiliate code) I just ordered 2 more. Hopefully this means they will be coming out with a much anticipated BlueRay version soon. I can only hope.
HP also has a very grand deal on a Media Center PC with a Cable Card tuner. I was able to put together an HP Pavilion m8100y with ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Card Tuner and Internal tuner for $892.49 after free shipping, taxes and a coupon DT1400 (expires 9/9/2007) I was emailed by them for custom Pavilion systems over $999 if you have a system over $699 you can use DT2222 for $200 off. It’s the best price I have seen for OCUR I mean CableCARD recording and for under $1000. Granted it comes with a smaller hard drive you will definitely need more if you are recording HD, but you can remedy that for an additional $300 for a 1TB drive or spend the same and do it yourself saving the 250GB for your base OS and programs. If you want an additional CableCARD Tuner it isn’t available in the configuration, but you can call to have it added for around $500. I just wonder if the CableCARD Tuner encrypts all video recorded, not just encrypted content from providers like HBO and Starz. Robert McLaws states that everything is encrypted even standard television and unencrypted HD. This is a deal breaker for me since I like to transfer my recordings to a more portable device, Portable Media Center, Windows Mobile device, or my Tablet PC for viewing away from the home. This blanket encryption will prevent me from doing so and I will have wasted money on a half-baked product as an early adopter. I am hoping to hear on verification if this holds true or if this will be corrected in a future update.
Here is a synopsis of the system I put together:
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- – Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium for digital cable tuner (32-bit)
- – Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo processor E6550 (2.33GHz)
- – FREE UPGRADE! 2GB DDR2-667MHz dual channel SDRAM (2×1024)
- – FREE UPGRADE! 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400GS, DVI-I, TV-out, HDMI
- – No Modem
- – 250GB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive
- – LightScribe 16X DVD+/-R/RW SuperMulti drive
- – 15-in-1 memory card reader, 2 USB, 1394, video
- – ATI TV Wonder digital cable tuner + internal tuner
- – Integrated 7.1 channel sound w/front audio ports
- – Norton Internet Security(TM) 2007 - 15 Months
- – Microsoft(R) Works 8.0
- – HP keyboard and HP scroller mouse
- – HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope
Granted this is a bare bones system and can be easily upgraded later as prices drop or you can upgrade it now at the point of purchase, keeping your warranty valid. It is a great price point if you are looking at getting a cable card based Windows Vista Media Center in your house for under $900 very close to a Tivo Series 3 HD Digital Recorder with dual cable card tuners and 300GB of storage, which can download content from Amazon’s Unbox and also doesn’t support TiVo Desktop to allow transfer to other PCs or devices like PSPs, Windows Mobile or iPods. So far the playing field is level in this respect.
Written by Steven Hughes - Visit Website
