Hya all,

Does anyone know witch hardware is needed to make full use of Windows XP Media Center Edition? What TV Tuner do I need, and what encoder cards are supported? Microsoft's nor HP's site reveal this little peace of vital information.

I have a good box, and I don't feel like buying an HP box just to please them :)

sorry buddy, but you are not going to be able to buy media center unless you get one of those pre-configured systems.

Buy? That was a metafor :)

The software is available, it just doesn't support my Miro / Pinnacle TVTuner card. And I need a encoder/decoder card, but I haven't got a clue witch one yet.
Í'm almost certain that HP doesn't produce those two components themselfs, so I'm wondering witch brands they use.

They use a Hauppauge Win/TV PVR 250 and also an Nvidia TV card I think. I'm looking for the best hardware too. For Audio I think I ran across the Creative Audigy. On the HP website there are some Adobe pdf files which describe the hardware somewhat. MS also has a public news forum for MCE where they answer a few questions.

well i figured that, but i thought... well you know. i wanted to do the same thing, then found out that all i needed was a tv tuner and didn't need media center to record tv shows and stuff since you can do it the tv tuner software.

but i didn't know what kind of tv tuner was a good one either (started thread in hardware).

OK, it's coming back now. The other TV card used on MCE was not Nvidia, it was an ATI card maybe the
ATI ALL IN WONDER RADEON 7500 AGP 64MB DDR W/REMOTE VIDEO CARD(RETAIL BOX) or an 8000 model. IF we use a remote TV card and a Creative remote sound card we will likely end up with two different remote controls but I think the HP's use only one remote. ???

Thanks all for the info so far. I'm getting an Hauppauge (don't ask me witch yet!) tomorrow, I'll post my findings as soon as I know more.

All I need to know now is witch encode/decode baord (if any) is being used . . .

Anyone :)

I came across this info some place...

Hmmm,

It now accepts my TV Tuner card (Hauppage WinTV-Radio model 662) but it warns that some file are damaged or missing. I guess you still can't use it without an encoder/decoder board.

Bummer . . .

has anyone tried one of those external usb tv tuners? wondering how they work.