Does Anybody Have a Media Center PC that Records HD?

[racketboy]

Right now I'm just doing standard def TV as my screen is only 27". My Media Center currently does fine with a 2GHz Pentium 4.

However, next year sometime (if prices continue to drop), I hope to upgrade to something like a 50 inch LCD.

Anyway, I'm guessing after that I'll want to start recording my TV in HD, and I'm guessing I'll need a heftier setup for my Media Center to handle it.

Is anybody experienced with this situation? I'd love to get some tips to keep in mind for upgrading.

[fox099]

I dont have a HD source at school, but im taking it home where I had HD in 2 weeks, so I can post then!

[Pulsar_t]

You're going to need a card like this one if you want to record HD. It should accept input from cable meaning minimal quality loss. I have a SkyStar 2 HD card that supports H264 but I'm not experienced with regard to cable signals and quality.

[racketboy]

What kind of CPU are you running?

[Pulsar_t]

I'm running HD on my humble PC which is why I don't call it a media centre or an HTPC (home theatre PC) either. I can't be of much help because I get DVBS here not cable. However it appears you'll need an HTPC which is compliant with CableCARD spec. I presume you wish to record premium content? That's the only way to go if that's the case. ATI offers such a solution, albeit a pricey one at $200+ (not including the HTPC itself). I wish I could be of more assistance but I have never tinkered with cable or TiVo to be certain.

http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/11/13/wh ... der-3-000/ Some people are willing to spend so much on HTPCs but it's much cheaper to build your own. However is it guaranteed that Vista in conjunction that ATI tuner would offer you record functionality? That's the most important question. From my hasty googling it appears the CableCARD standard is another fluff that hasn't been settled yet. You might buy a tuner today only for it to become obsolete a couple of years down the road (the wiki has more information regarding this)

[racketboy]

I'm running HD on my humble PC which is why I don't call it a media centre or an HTPC (home theatre PC) either. I can't be of much help because I get DVBS here not cable. However it appears you'll need an HTPC which is compliant with CableCARD spec. I presume you wish to record premium content? That's the only way to go if that's the case. ATI offers such a solution, albeit a pricey one at $200+ (not including the HTPC itself). I wish I could be of more assistance but I have never tinkered with cable or TiVo to be certain.

http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/11/13/wh ... der-3-000/ Some people are willing to spend so much on HTPCs but it's much cheaper to build your own. However is it guaranteed that Vista in conjunction that ATI tuner would offer you record functionality? That's the most important question. From my hasty googling it appears the CableCARD standard is another fluff that hasn't been settled yet. You might buy a tuner today only for it to become obsolete a couple of years down the road (the wiki has more information regarding this)

No premium content needed. Just basic cable, really.
So what processor do you have?

[Pulsar_t]

Believe it or not I'm still using an AthlonXP processor which is capable of HD playback using ffdshow (at least up to 720p, haven't tried 1080p on it yet). It sucks at encoding though so I use my Dell laptop for that instead. Here's a recent guide for building an HTPC. Note how the CPU load is 50% at 1080p.. the codec is probably multithreading-enabled. You'll also need the cable TV tuner of course. Here's another one that seems to do the trick.