New HTPC.. suggestions

S

shadowhc

n00b
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Jan 31, 2005
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Well I am building a new htpc:

I am not sure if I should go with mce or xp... any suggestions?

I was thinking of mce and if i dont like it turn off the front end and use my other license of sagetv

MSI 6150 board
Fusion5 hdtv usb
A64 3200+
512 MB Ram
DDL sound card
pvr 500 mce
X-QPack case or my old lanboy case
500 Gig HDD SATA
powercolor 550 pcie (when it comes out/ havent been able to find it in stock anywhere)
I think if i want to use mce, I will probably get a mce remote
Any suggestions
 
looks good, but why do you need a DDL sound card? I thought the 6150 boards had onboard digital output. and you are brave to go with such a plarge drive. I personall use smaller drives in case of drive failure. that way I don't lose as much data. personal preferance though. and as far as MCE or XP, if you have to buy a windows license, go ahead and get MCE. it's not much more than regular XP and it gives you something to compare.
 
you don't really "turn off the front end", you just dont launch it. mce is just xp pro w/o the ability to join a domain, as well as a program called media center. i've tried sage and did a /uninstall after 6 minutes of using it, i personally wasn't impressed. maybe if i had a server i could do the whole client thing, but then again i don't have a server. drop the sound card and just use onboard digital out, then spend that money on another hdd so you can run raid 1 or buy yourself another stick of ram.
 
th3 godfather said:
you don't really "turn off the front end", you just dont launch it.
Click to expand...
MCE sets its self up as a service, you need to go into the Services and disable it to disable MCE. After that it's just like any other install of XP Pro.

PC Alchemy lists the PCIe tuner as outof stock right now too, they list Feb 15 for when they have more stock.
 
Thanks, everyone for the responses, as for the sound card I couldnt find the spdif bracket anywhere. As for the big drive your right.. I might just get two or three small drives.
 
Quick question, I noticed in my asus A8N-sli deluxe that if i only use spdif out that any analog inputs will not pass thru to the spdif, such as line-in anyone know if the msi still has this issue. I believe that will call for DDL then. Thanks in advance
 
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