- October 15, 2008
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United States of America
My friend told me how he was thinking of building an HTPC and how he was going to use Media Portal to do it. I've had an HTPC for a couple years now (MCE 2005 and now Vista) and have loved it!
However, since being told about Media Portal, I've been giving some thought about switching over. Before I do, however, I'd need to ask some questions. Hopefully someone here can help me with them.
1. What sort of video out options are there?
My TV is a 4:3 1080i TV. I know 1080 is a wide screen resolution, so I don't know how this works. When a wide screen resolution is piped into the set, the TV just squishes it into 4:3 format. Everything is really crisp, just really squished. Conversely, having Windows take it back down to 480i brings it into the right format, but everything is just slightly fuzzy and I notice slight over scan. Letting Windows handle it like a monitor is disastrous, however, as trying to make the TV use a standard resolution makes it unusable (no matter what scan rate I tell it to use).
I'd need to be able to use a higher resolution while retaining 4:3.
2. Does it allow the use of video in?
Windows Media Center (no matter which version) does not support video in. Even though my TV Cards have a spot for it, WMC just won't switch to "input". As such, my Xbox and VCR are hooked up using the TV's inputs instead. This isn't a deal breaker, but it'd be nice to do, so I thought I'd ask just the same.
3. What's it's CPU and GPU overhead like?
As previously said, my picture looks best at 1080i, despite the squishing. The real reason I don't just deal with squishy faces is that 1080i seems to stress Windows and slow down the overall feel of everything. On top of that, what ever encoder Windows uses to scale the TV signal REALLY doesn't like scaling a standard signal up that high. If MP is easier on system resources, this would be really important to me. Also would be how well it scales the signal up to 1080.
4. What about movie setup?
I know it's in the manual, and wiki, but there aren't many screenshots of it in action. I currently use a program called MyMovies that plugs into WMC and uses a db to store all info. My wife and kids have come to love this feature above all else and would lynch me if I installed a new media program that didn't have something like it.
Sorry for what are probably really dumb questions, but HTPC configuration is one of the more stressing things in my household. My family is fine with me tweaking the crap out of the PC, so long as I can eventually fix it . . . but if you screw up the TV, you're life is forfeit!
However, since being told about Media Portal, I've been giving some thought about switching over. Before I do, however, I'd need to ask some questions. Hopefully someone here can help me with them.
1. What sort of video out options are there?
My TV is a 4:3 1080i TV. I know 1080 is a wide screen resolution, so I don't know how this works. When a wide screen resolution is piped into the set, the TV just squishes it into 4:3 format. Everything is really crisp, just really squished. Conversely, having Windows take it back down to 480i brings it into the right format, but everything is just slightly fuzzy and I notice slight over scan. Letting Windows handle it like a monitor is disastrous, however, as trying to make the TV use a standard resolution makes it unusable (no matter what scan rate I tell it to use).
I'd need to be able to use a higher resolution while retaining 4:3.
2. Does it allow the use of video in?
Windows Media Center (no matter which version) does not support video in. Even though my TV Cards have a spot for it, WMC just won't switch to "input". As such, my Xbox and VCR are hooked up using the TV's inputs instead. This isn't a deal breaker, but it'd be nice to do, so I thought I'd ask just the same.
3. What's it's CPU and GPU overhead like?
As previously said, my picture looks best at 1080i, despite the squishing. The real reason I don't just deal with squishy faces is that 1080i seems to stress Windows and slow down the overall feel of everything. On top of that, what ever encoder Windows uses to scale the TV signal REALLY doesn't like scaling a standard signal up that high. If MP is easier on system resources, this would be really important to me. Also would be how well it scales the signal up to 1080.
4. What about movie setup?
I know it's in the manual, and wiki, but there aren't many screenshots of it in action. I currently use a program called MyMovies that plugs into WMC and uses a db to store all info. My wife and kids have come to love this feature above all else and would lynch me if I installed a new media program that didn't have something like it.
Sorry for what are probably really dumb questions, but HTPC configuration is one of the more stressing things in my household. My family is fine with me tweaking the crap out of the PC, so long as I can eventually fix it . . . but if you screw up the TV, you're life is forfeit!
