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Thread ID: 71210 2006-07-29 22:11:00 How good is this?...... zahmad (8963) Press F1
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474638 2006-07-29 22:11:00 What do you guys think of this Media Centre PC?......in terms of value and performance......

www.playtech.co.nz
zahmad (8963)
474639 2006-07-29 22:41:00 :eek: Much better than my Dell Dimension 1100 with intergrated graphics! :eek: I say go for it! pcuser42 (130)
474640 2006-07-29 23:17:00 No firewire? zqwerty (97)
474641 2006-07-30 04:27:00 I am thinking about purchasing a media centre,,,,,,,,but my budget is limited. So I was wondering if these specs are fine.....or I can build my own system with the new AM2 AMD socket.....but I was thinking it would cost a whole lot more if i do....and how is the upgradability of this system? zahmad (8963)
474642 2006-07-30 06:45:00 Looks to be a pretty good machine for the money. You may be able to build a comparable machine for similar money but at least with the prebuilt you know the media centre software, tv tuners should all work well together. I've heard of some home built media pc's that have lot's of fun configuring everything to work together nicely.

You'll certainly notice the difference compared to your current setup.
cbee (10858)
474643 2006-07-31 04:53:00 Thanks for the reply.......and what are the future upgrade options for this Pentium D? zahmad (8963)
474644 2006-07-31 09:25:00 Am I the only one that hates these "Media Centre" things? You can build the same thing yourself but with a decent case.


"# Record your favorite TV shows
# Watch, pause, and rewind live or recorded TV
# View your digital photos as a slide show
# View your music by the album art
# Create music playlists and download them to your portable music player"

And? You can do that on any PC with a TV TUner in it.
pctek (84)
474645 2006-07-31 09:36:00 Hi, my thoughts are......

1 Its a PresHOT core times 2, with a fast speed, so it will get hot, needing greater fan speed, meaning more noise or cpu throttling.
2 You wont be playing games with the boys on your big screen TV if thats something that you'd like, judging from that lame graphics card.
3 The drive is a fair size though if storing movies, 500Gb would be better.

I think its over priced for what you get considering no monitor included.

:2cents:
SolMiester (139)
474646 2006-08-01 04:21:00 Hi, my thoughts are......

1 Its a PresHOT core times 2, with a fast speed, so it will get hot, needing greater fan speed, meaning more noise or cpu throttling.
2 You wont be playing games with the boys on your big screen TV if thats something that you'd like, judging from that lame graphics card.
3 The drive is a fair size though if storing movies, 500Gb would be better.

I think its over priced for what you get considering no monitor included.

:2cents:
Yes, After I added the price of a monitor and 5.1 speakers, I can build a better system for the same price :D!
zahmad (8963)
474647 2006-08-01 09:51:00 What do you guys think of this Media Centre PC?......in terms of value and performance......


Looks like quite a fair deal. The components appear to all be on the media center compatibility list. It's well overspeced for a dual tuner system. I am not sure if the the PVR-500 can be used with two set top boxes or just two antennas only however.

Don't worry about games or building a 'cheaper' system out of other components, media center is prescriptive about tuners, sound cards and graphics adaptors (for good reason). A roll your own media center is a labour of love, if you want something that works out of the box buy a pre built one.

A genuine windows media center is a very beautiful thing. Some crappy desktop PC with a $90 tuner with software encoding is a pile of kak in comparison, you wife will hate you if you introduce something like that to her lounge...
BIFF (1)
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