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<blockquote data-quote="druffski" data-source="post: 158101" data-attributes="member: 50164">Firstly, welcome to Media Portal! Building a HTPC is exciting, and you'll find that you are never truly finished. there are always new things to try out. I can answer some of your questions:I would stick with WinXP SP2. Vista is quite memory hungry, and you may find some of your games don't work well under Vista. A lot of game forums have reported this.Plugins - the plugins I've installed have all been self installing. There should be an exe/msi file in the plugins you've downloaded? If you open MediaPortal setup, click Plugins. they should appear somewhere in here.Wireless networking - My HTPC sits in the loungeroom connected to the internet by wireless network card (my wife wont let me drill holes in the floors for network cables). If the signal strength is good, you wont have any issues here.S-Video for the TV connection - I'm running the same in my setup, I've not noticed a big difference. When watching video it is still good. Having said that, it can be difficult to read the writing, though I think this is due to tv resolution.Wireless Gamepads - best way to check this is to see if you can control the menu functions in WinXP normally. If so, then you should be ok with it. I ended up getting the Media Center Remote which works brilliantly.All the best, and the forum is always here if you run into problems.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="druffski, post: 158101, member: 50164"] Firstly, welcome to Media Portal! Building a HTPC is exciting, and you'll find that you are never truly finished. there are always new things to try out. I can answer some of your questions: I would stick with WinXP SP2. Vista is quite memory hungry, and you may find some of your games don't work well under Vista. A lot of game forums have reported this. Plugins - the plugins I've installed have all been self installing. There should be an exe/msi file in the plugins you've downloaded? If you open MediaPortal setup, click Plugins. they should appear somewhere in here. Wireless networking - My HTPC sits in the loungeroom connected to the internet by wireless network card (my wife wont let me drill holes in the floors for network cables). If the signal strength is good, you wont have any issues here. S-Video for the TV connection - I'm running the same in my setup, I've not noticed a big difference. When watching video it is still good. Having said that, it can be difficult to read the writing, though I think this is due to tv resolution. Wireless Gamepads - best way to check this is to see if you can control the menu functions in WinXP normally. If so, then you should be ok with it. I ended up getting the Media Center Remote which works brilliantly. All the best, and the forum is always here if you run into problems. [/QUOTE]

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