Advies/Help needed with building new HTPC (1 Viewer)

[Samz]

Hi,

I'm starting to build a new Media Portal computer and wanted to ask some advice. I looked through the forum but came up with various answers so I'm not sure anymore.

I have:

Antec Fusion
Asus M2A-VM HDMI
AMD 2350
2GB Ram
500GB HD
HD Ready Plasma 720P
Digital Everywhere Floppy DVB-C
TV Provider = Caiway Free to Air in the Netherlands
Audio = connected via SPDIF
TV = connected via HDMI

Now my questions:

I would like to run the TV Server single seat configuration
- Can I do this with Vista 32 Home Premium or is it better to use XP Pro?

The onboard X1250 Graphics card
- Can I use the latest Catalyst or do I have to use an older version drivers?

Caiway TV
- Does anyone know if all tv channels are on the same transponder?

Do I need to pay special attention to any other settings, issues etc?

Thanks

 

[Spragleknas]

Hi, and welcome to the forum, Samz

The onboard X1250 Graphics card
- Can I use the latest Catalyst or do I have to use an older version drivers

You have to use 7.2 or previous. Or modded XML-files (skinfiles).

 

[Mew]

Hi Samz

I would like to run the TV Server single seat configuration
- Can I do this with Vista 32 Home Premium or is it better to use XP Pro?
Thanks

I have used both, starting with XP Pro SP2 and then moving to Vista. They both worked fine.

XP needed more tweaking for me like the patches for DVB-S and more than 2 DVB tuners and one to get the MCE remote to work. The Nvidia drivers were more configurable for XP, and the Vista versions still do not have all the features the XP ones have, but this won't affect you. I also had an issue in XP that if I had hardware acceleration enabled for the PowerDVD or Purevideo decoders then I saw slight stuttering (especially noticeable in scrolling text) after the PC resumed from hibernation. Again this could be an Nvidia issue.

I had to wait before moving to Vista to ensure the drivers for all my HTPC hardware was available and this quite rightly is a major consideration. Once I moved I have found that Vista for me has been more stable, but this could also be that the builds of TV Server / MediaPortal have been more stable. I also now have EVR enabled which I believe can only be hardware accelerated in Vista. I believe that EVR has given a better picture (more vivid colours) but that might just be my perception.

To summerise, both have worked fine for me, but other users on the forum have some issues with Vista which they haven't had with XP (these may be driver related as some Vista drivers are still in more or less beta version and XP has been around for 6 years so the drivers are more stable). Saying that a lot of people who experience problems run XP as it is still more popular, so it is difficult to tell.

Mew

 

[Samz]

Thanks,

I have started to build configure etc.

Using Vista 32 Home Premium.

Unfortunatly I can't get the TV Channels to appear in the TV Server, I followed the instruction movies and sofar no problem.

The card does find some channe;s but they are all paid channels (Playboy, HD etc). None of the FTA seem to be showing up.

I'm using:

55400
64Q
6900

For Caiway Uithoorn in the Netherlands. I've looked everywhere on the Internet and although I find lots of transponder, I can't find one for Caiway.

Tonight I'll start a second try (first one took allmost 4 hours).

 

[Samz]

Finally I have all tv stations up and running (more than I want actually).

Now I'm gonna finetune my installation, couple things don't work or do not what I expect them but that will be solved because I refuse to use MCE