Who of you have media center PC's? What are the specs? Pictures would be awsome too.

Mine isnt nothing special:
Pentium 3 1GHz
128MB ram Im adding 256mb more very soon
Creative Labs sound card
Vectra (I think thats the name) sound card
Radeon VE (7000 with dual VGA and S video out)
Sabrent SBT TVFM
120GB Seagate HDD

You may have seen me talk about this before, it used to be my main PC.

The output from that goes to a Goldstar VCR than to a RCA vcr, where it mixes with satellite and DVD then to the TV and surround sound.

It runs XP pro and im trying to get ahold of XP MCE

Posted by Crazydeep74 im trying to get ahold of XP MCE

then i suggest bittorrent. as a client, use azureus (google it), and for a tracker use oink.co.uk, demonoid.com, or isohunt.com.

/

i think he has dialup.....

unless i am wrong, i remember him saying something about the cable internet being canceled.

I got cable back.

oh, ok. my bad. what he said: bittorrent

i just searched demonoid, no MCE up right now, but isohunt has a few copies.

I was thinking about putting a spare 3.2Ghz P4, HDD, and CD-ROM in this set, but I never felt like spending the $$$.

I'm slowly pulling mine together.

P4 3.2Ghz
1GB RAM
4x 400GB SATA 150 Seagate's (RAID)
I just bought a fairly cheap TV Tuner card that does encode and save to DIVX on the fly and a nice DVD player for the other TV that plays DIVX format.

Oh, and then there's this...36" RCA Proscan HDTV that displays 1024x768 native...

im gonna screw around with a 1g athlon, 70gb harddrive, 700mb ram, some cheap tuner card.

I've been running XP MCE 2005 for a couple months now, out through my projector (infocus X1)

Pentium III - 800(133fsb)
512mb SDRAM
Radeon 9200 (64mb)
SB Live 5.1
200gb seagate
dual layer dvd burner/dvd-rom

It handles everything that I do with it quite well. I mostly use it to play dvd's, though I will use it for the occasional internet search when i'm in the theater. I'm also ripping all of my CD's to the hard-drive in WMA lossless (it's about 42mb for a six minute song).

I haven't gotten a tuner card, but there's no way to get a cable jack to that room anyhow, so i'm just living without cable on the big screen.

So why not just install a splitter on the nearest line, and then run a cable line to the MCE PC from the splitter while running the cable itself under baseboards or along the wall/ceiling seam by using cable holders?

It's how I get cable in my bedroom.

well, as a renter I can't really go drilling through walls, and basically, between my theater room and the nearest cable jack is a hallway, my bedroom, and then the living/dining/kitchen area, on the very opposite side of which is the cable jack. To run it without drilling any holes is over 100' of cable (to go over doorways, etc.)

I'm living without decently happily.

Wireless video senders.

Posted by Crazydeep74 Wireless video senders.

Yeah, you could also put the MediaPC in a room with cable and just buy a Bluetooth CLASS 1 dongle for it and a bluetooth remote instead of an infrared one for a few pennies (like 12$ for the dongle and maybe 20$ for the remote) and stick in a very small video sender that you could put right on the projector... No more wires necessary .

Bluetooth Class-1 functions fine up to 100m (328ft).

Ok, I have considered hardwiring my home for cable tv as well. My questions are:

• I have comcast cable internet.. Is there anyway I could "borrow" cable tv through the same line?
  
  
• The internet cables going into my house say DS6 on them. Does that mean it is digital cable wiring for 6 channels?
  
  
• Is it possible for me to have a setup like so:
  
  

  click to view

  
  
  
• And if it was possible for me to do that, would the cable tv slow my internet connection?
  
  
• What kind of coax cable do I need? more of the DS6 stuff? and can I cut it anywhere and put an end on it? or do I have to cut it in certain places? I heard you can only cut it in certain places due something called wavelengths?
  

I googled most of this stuff, but I could only find the image above and some other things helpful.

I have comcast cable internet.. Is there anyway I could "borrow" cable tv through the same line?

Yes, just call up comcast and ask them to activate it. It's cheap and this isn't the board to discuss such things.

The internet cables going into my house say DS6 on them. Does that mean it is digital cable wiring for 6 channels?

Uhh...It's probably just a coax cable, that's typicaly what it is, I'd have to see it.

Is it possible for me to have a setup like so: click to view

Yes, the cable company will tell you that splitting it will drop the signal strength, and it does, buy a high quality splitter to avoid line loss and you should be fine.

And if it was possible for me to do that, would the cable tv slow my internet connection?

No. The cable modem signal is limited to a certain section of bandwidth so it doesn't interfere with TV and vice-versa.

What kind of coax cable do I need? more of the DS6 stuff? and can I cut it anywhere and put an end on it? or do I have to cut it in certain places? I heard you can only cut it in certain places due something called wavelengths?

Coax is typically just coax, the only thing you need to worry about is buying the right type of connector.

Keep your shortest length at least 1 meter and you shouldn't have a problem. The higher quality cable you buy the less line loss you will have.

Cable is cheap and so are the connectors - go nuts and buy the .40 ones instead of the .15 ones and you'll be saving yourself some headaches.

Posted by Chainsaw Uhh...It's probably just a coax cable, that's typicaly what it is, I'd have to see it.

My camera is crap and i can't get a good pic of it. Anyways its got something on it that says DS6.02-03. Not too important though.

Yes, the cable company will tell you that splitting it will drop the signal strength, and it does, buy a high quality splitter to avoid line loss and you should be fine.

Alright. I have been looking at some other stuff as well and found this, I think I'm going to try to do this as it seems an answer to all my prayers. No more carting dvd players around the house. I just kinda got lost with the video distribution panel they have in room A (see diagram below) and when they went on about the Stereo MTS modulators, Tilt Compensators, and Signal Strength Attenuator Pads. I kinda got confused. Does the audio from the cable tv play on the tv or on the surround sound when you watch tv? (sorry, until now I have had neither surround sound in my home theatre system or cable tv) And if I have the dvd player in the other room would I still have surround sound on my speakers if I got a modulator for 4 or more channels?

...the only thing you need to worry about is buying the right type of connector. Keep your shortest length at least 1 meter and you shouldn't have a problem. The higher quality cable you buy the less line loss you will have.

connectors? how do they differ?

So buying RG-6 cable would be sufficient or should I go higher? My longest run will be about 150-175 feet. And I can cut it anywhere longer than a meter?

That diagram you posted seems tobe a tad more than you want to do, as far as I understand. That setup incorporates surveillance type system into it. RG-6 should be fine. If your looking to wire your home, dont go around looking at other peoples diagrams, becuase obviously they wont fit your needs. Make one your own, im sure we can help out.

I'm probably dropping out the cameras and just dropping in some other stuff like dvd players or a media center pc or some other stuff.... I'm not doing exactly the exact same thing, but the general concept of multiple TVs sharing dvd players and other stuff sounds exactly what I've been looking to do....

Posted by Crazydeep74 Who of you have media center PC's? What are the specs? Pictures would be awsome too. [snip] It runs XP pro and im trying to get ahold of XP MCE

Gentle word of warning here... if you intend to run Windows Media Centre, be extremely careful of putting purchased CDs into it. Appears Sony is shipping a so-called rootkit with some of their new music CDs. These software is bad news on an ordinary PC, but a major disaster on Windows Media PCs.

Here's the original blog that broke the story: Mark's Sysinternals Blog:

http://www.sysinte...igital-rights.html