Media Centre

04th May '08 by Andy

I've finally managed to successfully set up my home media center for the spare room, yes I know it's supposed to be easy - but hey I'm not that bright ok. I just thought I'd mention some of the items I had to buy, and whether they're any good, along with those major problems that someone else may be able to learn from.

First up, the new monitor (Samsung 2232BW) this montior is so clear, the colour clarity is superb, and it looks so slick with the shiny black plastic that seems synonomous with Samsung these days, also the software that comes with it is well worth installing giving extra vibrancy, and making image adjustment even easier (as the samsung's buttons are a bit fiddly) adjustment can be done via the application.

Next up was a TV tuner card - the Hauppage WinTV-HVR 1100 - this tuner card works perfectly well on XP through its packkaged software, however when brought up on XP Media Center the first thing I was confronted with was a decoder error, incidentally there is a solution to this problem, you need an mpeg2 dvd decoder that is compatible with media center - here is a free one.