Does anyone have any experience with Media Centre PC's?

Assuming a PC costing ~£750 with a quality graphic (DVI) and soundcard (Co-ax and 5.1 out) along with wireless networking and Windows Media Centre. How does this compare with a stand alone DVD player budget wise?

PCs are only just starting to do what good DVD players have always done in the fields of de-interlacing, pull-down correction and scaling. I've been happily playing with Nvidia's PureVideo filters lashed to an iiyama 22 inch Diamondtron for a couple of weeks, they haven't slipped up often.

Naim kit will always give a better video performance so I suppose the advantage of a PC based solution is flexibility such as recording lots of TV and doing very naughty things like watching a DVD after it's gone back to the rental shop.

Ideally you'd have both DVD player and PC.

C



Oh all right then, here's the nerdy stuff. Get a good local independent PC store who builds to order to advise you. A Core 2 Duo Shuttle allows only one PCI card so if you want DVB-T TV and need dual tuners I think Pinnacle might be your only choice if running Media Centre. If you don't want TV or can live with a single tuner as an external USB device get a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi card in there. It does for damaged/compressed Dolby and DTS soundtracks what the aforementioned DVD players and Nvidia filters do for video: mend broken stuff. Works on compressed stereo music too, the bass line comes up out of obscurity, sound stage opens up but more importantly there's lots more attack at the top end (this on 202 Hi-Cap 200 Ariva).

Quality is I would say as good as or better (but you may need to do some messing around)

BUT the important questions are:-

- How quiet is it
- How long does it take to start
- A DVD player does not need a firewall/AntiVirus/AntiSpyware software
- Will you use the extra features
- Use optical digital connection or earth isolated connection to avoid trashing your system with mains hash.

I decided to but a Denon 3910 just to get the quality and avoid PC questions from HWMBO.

That said, I plan to move everything to NAS storage and have a mini (quiet PC) in every room, cabling in place just waiting for the technology to really fulfill.

quote:

Originally posted by nap-ster:
Assuming a PC costing ~£750 with a quality graphic (DVI) and soundcard (Co-ax and 5.1 out) along with wireless networking and Windows Media Centre. How does this compare with a stand alone DVD player budget wise?

I'd definitely go for the stand alone dvd player, if only for the reasons Stuart M mentionned. hdmi connection is very common nowadays (if your display system can handle it) and £750 will give you a very satisfying piece of hardware.

Thanks guys,

The more I look into it the more the DVD player stand alone makes sense with possibly a Mini Mac an option for the networking etc.

Now to hunt down a DVD player !!!!

quote:

Originally posted by nap-ster:
Now to hunt down a DVD player !!!!

from what I've seen from the cheaper 868 model, the Pioneer DV-989AVi-S should be some kind of dream machine