School me on Media Centers

[Cl0ak]

So I want to pimp my living room. I'm picking up a 37" LCD tv in a few weeks and I figured it would be pretty sweet if I could get with the technology age here and have a windows media center type setup. I tried researching it a bit but i'm still a little unsure of what I need.

Would it be best to get a media center "bundle" type deal? Whats the typical setup and cost if any of you guys have one, and is it worth it or should I just give the idea up.

I pretty much just want to watch tv, record some movies, and access the internet from the couch with a wireless keyboard/mouse. Thanks for any advice. opcorn:

[Oz]

A media centre is basically a PC with a decent amount of storage (200gb+), a TV tuner and specialised Operating System allowing it to be driven via Remote. You can either take an existing PC, depending what you have, and modify it into a Media Centre, buy a new Media Centre PC, buy a specialised Media Centre package or build your own from scratch. Decide which option you want to take, and the advice you'll get will become more specific.

In my opinion the technology hasn't matured enough to be in my lounge room just yet, I'm giving it another 12-24 months.

[Cl0ak]

Thanks for the advice Oz. I've been checking out the media center pc's and they seem to have a couple in a decent price range, would I be better off buying a pre-built system, or custom building one and buying the operating system. The only operating systems i've seen are built into a unit already, can it be purchased seperately?

[Oz]

There are dodgy copies of Windows Media Player floating around the net, I'm not sure if you can buy it - I think so.

I think you'd be better off building your own - you'll learn a lot and save some money

[Cl0ak]

Good deal, thanks for the tips. I'm going to shop around and try to build it as best I can keeping the cost low. I want to put as much as possible into a sweet television. As you brought up with the technology changing and maturing I don't know if its wise to invest thousands of dollars just yet in a fancy system only to be left behind a few months from now.

[doberman_52]

Im pretty sure you can buy media center seperate, you might even be able to build one cheaper than it would cost through dell, i could, but xp pro would be good enough too