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Build The Perfect Windows Media Center PC

Monday, August 25th, 2008 – running time 32:56
Build The Perfect Windows Media Center PC
DVR, HD Tuner, Blu-ray and more... Our fave HDTV expert, PCMag.com's Robert Heron, joins us with a host of tricks for turning Vista's Windows Media Center into a great Home Theater PC

Building a Home Theater PC? Thinking about HDTV, Blu-ray, and how serious a GPU or CPU you need if you don't want to run video games on your HDTV? Can you get away with 1GB of memory? What about hard drive size, or the best tuner for HD?

You're gonna love this episode! Our fave HDTV expert, Robert Heron, from PCMag.com and DL.TV, joins Patrick with a host of expert ideas tips and tricks for turning your Windows Media Center into the ultimate media PC.

BTW, our new fave tool for playing Blu-ray movies in Windows Media Center is AcrSoft's TotalMedia Theater or TotalMedia Extreme...

Vista centric? Sure! It comes standard with Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate does a solid job playing DVDs, recording TV and handling your favorite audio and video files.

Looking to integrate Blu-ray playback into your WMC machine? Check out TotalMedia Theatre, $90, which not only plays well with the WMC interface, but still plays HD-DVD disks. It's definitely a more convenient than our former fave, CyberLink's PowerDVD 8 Ultra, $99.95, which bumps you out of the WMC GUI.

Vista... not so much? We also give you a list of WMC alternatives on the show... so you can turn just about any XP or Vista PC into an amazing Home Theater PC.

On the commercial front:

Free and Open Source:

Previous: MythTV: Free Media Center From a Junk PC!

Next: Photo Archaeology

No transcript created yet. Check back soon.

chuckles

Started discussion: August 25, 2008 @ 3:23pm GMT

Episode 65 - Build a Great Vista Home Theater PC!

Our fave HDTV expert, PCMag.com's Robert Heron, joins Patrick with a host of tips and tricks for building the best HTPC with the Windows Media Center in Vista!

Watch or download.

-chuckles--

P.S. - OMGZ!! I beat Travislopes to it for once!!

chuckles
10 months ago
In reply to chuckles:
P.S. - OMGZ!! I beat Travislopes to it for once!!


It probably has to do with the fact that this episode was a little late in coming out.

-chuckles-
IanPR
10 months ago
Or you just used your evil staff powers to delete his post. :D
esalonia
10 months ago
Yay, a visit from Robert Heron
chuckles
10 months ago
In reply to IanPR:
Or you just used your evil staff powers to delete his post. :D



Damn it!!! I bet masherscf was the one who ratted me out!

-chuckles-
computoman
10 months ago
I sure would have liked them to install vista or at least spend more time on which version vista to install and actually do a hands on with the multimedia apps. The info about cables and connections was a bit interesting. After the comment "settop boxes and linux are a match made in heaven", why even deal with vista? There was another comment i think about putting vista on a low end machine. Yeah right?
I am no where convinced that a vista home theater PC would be great.



"I like that thought" How many times was it said. uugh!!! Get a thesaurus......
travislopes
10 months ago
In reply to chuckles:
P.S. - OMGZ!! I beat Travislopes to it for once!!


DAMNT! *goes and weeps in the corner*

(It was a combination of episode not showing up on time and actually having to do school work.)
Serafina
10 months ago
In reply to computoman:
I sure would have liked them to install vista or at least spend more time on which version vista to install and actually do a hands on with the multimedia apps. The info about cables and connections was a bit interesting. After the comment "settop boxes and linux are a match made in heaven", why even deal with vista? There was another comment i think about putting vista on a low end machine. Yeah right?
I am no where convinced that a vista home theater PC would be great.



"I like that thought" How many times was it said. uugh!!! Get a thesaurus......



You want us to show you how to install Vista? Really? And if you don't want to use Vista, that's why we talked about Mythtv last week. You've got options!
wv1973
10 months ago
This was a very good episode, much clearer than last weeks episode where mythtv was discussed. I was totally lost and to be quite honest the other dude with Patrick is definitely a Linux maven, but not that great a co host.

It would be nice to see Robert on more often.
chuckles
10 months ago
In reply to wv1973:
the other dude with Patrick is definitely a Linux maven


Brendan is so gonna cry... he is a FreeBSD guy.

-chuckles-
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