Cameron Gibbs

Just a quick note… I tried using a cheap TV tuner from work with MCE only to discover that it wasn’t compatible with MCE (though the quality of the image captured wasn’t too bad when I used the software included with the card). Though I think it’s lame that any TV tuner card won’t work with MCE (my limited knowledge of video capture tells me that any TV tuner hardware should work), I’m anxious to get one that does so I can try out MCE as a DVR.

Here’s a list of manufacturers of TV tuner cards that do work with MCE. From the research I’ve done on this, it sounds like Hauppauge is the one to get. Unless you’re willing to get one from ebay for $65, the best price it looks like you’re gonna find is $99 before shipping. Another option is the AverMedia TV tuner (also compatible with MCE, of course) at Tiger Direct for $65.

I’m unsure of whether I want the kit or not (the kit comes with the remote and costs another $30). We’ll see.

Don’t ever use McAfee. It came pre-installed on my new computer from Dell and it hogs all of the 1 gig of RAM (yes, at times it causes my computer to freeze because it’s using all of the memory).

As far as everything else goes with the new pc, like McDonald’s, “I’m lovin’ it!” When I first got back from my mission in 2000, I got a new eMachines running Win ME and I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever owned up to that point in my life. But the 633 MHz processor, the 64 MB of RAM, the 15 GB HDD, and more than anything the incredibly horrible OS (ME) just wasn’t cutting it. I upgraded my PC about a year ago to XP and threw on more RAM but that was just to prolong the computer’s inevitable replacement within a year.

My new Dell Dimension 3100 has a 2.8 Mhz Intel Pentium 4 processor, 1 Gig of RAM, a 80 GB HD and runs XP Media Center 2005 so this is a HUGE upgrade for me. I’ve played with the MCE a little but I need to get a few things to really enjoy it (like a TV tuner card, a decent video card, and a nice LCD monitor — I’m still using the bulkly 15 incher that came with the eMachines system… can’t wait ’til then).