Question for the Experts: Television Hard Disk recorder and Internet box for tv

[milanbenes]

Any road, (nice bit of emerdale farm jargon there)


anyone got any useful feedback

or have I got to waste a shed load of time reading about all this crap and when to buy ?

Milan.

[doodab]

A HTPC will do everything you need. So will a mac I expect. Some TVs will connect to the internet directly these days as well.

[DimPrawn]

Get a Mac.

Apple (United Kingdom) - Apple TV - Rent from the hottest selection of HD films. Straight from your sofa.

[milanbenes]

A HTPC will do everything you need. So will a mac I expect. Some TVs will connect to the internet directly these days as well.

thanks doobab,

so you're saying if I buy one of those fashionable shiny super thin mac books, then it can be used as a tv hard disk recorder ?

can't buy a mac though cos if I do all my friends will think I am a lefty tree hugger


thanks for the tip on the htpc though will check it

Milan.

[Churchill]

thanks doobab,

so you're saying if I buy one of those fashionable shiny super thin mac books, then it can be used as a tv hard disk recorder ?

can't buy a mac though cos if I do all my friends will think I am "artistic"*!


thanks for the tip on the htpc though will check it

Milan.

*homosexual

ftfy.

[milanbenes]

you got it dad

macs are for girls



Milan.

[Troll]

Fook ...looks like a dodged a bullet there!

Been listing reasons why i shouldn't buy the 27" iMac



Reassuringly expensive & nice big screen

Chief negative is that it wouldn't run the software I want to (or will it emulate a PC)

but if its also a gay icon, then no way will it get into my man den

[milanbenes]

Troll,

you see, without this thread, you'd have spent not small money, for a new toy for your 'man den' and your friends would think you're a girl and your man den become a different kind of man den


watch how all the folks here who have the macs now go quiet

Milan.

[chef]

One solution as Doodab said, a HTPC.

1) a PC that runs Windows 7, if you click on the Windows Media Center icon under Start > All Programs it will open it up.
2) within Media Center there's a Config section that allows it to open up automatically.
3) buy a tv card depending on your needs (Hauppauge comes highly recommended by Chef towers but other cards are available)
a) Normal Digital Tv (i.e plug your tv aerial in) & Freeview, then you need WinTVHVR-1700- is a simple 1 channel device (i.e watch 1 channel or record 1 channel but not at the same time)
b) wintvhvr-2200 is a 2 channel device, so as above, plug in aerial for normal tv inc freeview except you now have 2 channels (i.e watch itv while eastenders on bbc is recording for the missus)
c) wintvhvr3300 is the same as above but now also includes sateliite (i.e aswell as plugging your tv aerial in, also plug your Sky receiver into it)
d) wintv-hvr4400 is the same as the 3300 but also includes decoding for HD satellite tv.

each tv-card uses a PCI-E slot on your motherboard, connect the HDMI output of the PC to your TV (assuming you have HDMI input on your TV?)
and hey presto, you now have a TV that doubles as a PC and can also record as much as you want (well as much as you have Hard Disk space for)..

Hauppauge internal tv cards come with a windows remote but you might want to swap that for something more like a Logitech Harmony Remote and if you're going to use the TV as a PC then you might also want to look at a decent 'front room friendly' mouse/keyboard combo such as the Logitech Dinovo Edge both of which are currently in use in Chef towers and come fully gf chef approved in terms of "looking nice" and "easy to use"

Considerations
1) Hard disk space (i.e lots)
2) Noise, obviously having a jet engine of a PC in your front room is not going to go down well with the missus so you may want to look at replacing the CPU fan with a passive one. And also any standard case fans you might want to replace with some quieter ones aswell
3) looks, if it sat in the front room then I'm guessing it cant look like some teenage geeks dayglo Alienware style machine
4) If you're going to have a PC you might aswell add a Blu-ray drive in their too.. possibly even a blu-ray writer

[Troll]

Considerations
1) Hard disk space (i.e lots)
2) Noise, obviously having a jet engine of a PC in your front room is not going to go down well with the missus so you may want to look at replacing the CPU fan with a passive one. And also any standard case fans you might want to replace with some quieter ones aswell
3) looks, if it sat in the front room then I'm guessing it cant look like some teenage geeks dayglo Alienware style machine
4) If you're going to have a PC you might aswell add a Blu-ray drive in their too.. possibly even a blu-ray writer

err... a friend just asked why you wouldn't consider using one of these which address several of the points above
shuttles