What is needed to make a media center PC

[Renau]

I have an old PC which I want to upgrade. This time I want to spend my amount on making this as a media center PC. I am looking for appropriate suggestion for creating my own media center PC. The old one already has a windows XP os. I can arrange for the media center edition also. What should I do here for this purpose. When you are talking about media-center software, the most complete package you are going to come across is the Windows XP Media Center Edition (xpMCE) operating system. As recently as 2005, this operating system was only available to PC manufacturers, but now you can buy it and use it as the center of a media-center upgrade.

[deoWo]

If you want your own media-center improves characteristically costs less than buying a manufacturer-built a computer. You can do an attractive decent improvement. It is a fine method to go if you are immediately looking for a unit that gets the job completed and has some pleasant home-theater characteristics. As far as hardware goes, you are not looking at most important accumulations. If you previously have a display and a pleasant set of speakers in your home-theater system, you are actually immediately looking at upgrading your PC sound card and storage ability (a video library takes up tons of space an external hard drive is fine).

[RoninBlade]

The sound card is supposed to maintain whatever speakers you desire to use the stereo, digital border or multichannel analog encircle. If you are looking for home-theater-excellence audio, a surround-sound system shared with a 24-bit card will present exceptional sound. If you will be outputting to a receiver, look for a card with coaxial or visual digital outputs for the most excellent results.

[Fabian]

For this the storage capability, you will almost certainly desire to be in the 400-to-500-gigabyte series. If you will be recording HDTV, you may desire the additional. If you are not an audio/video junkie and you are prepared to use higher density ratios, you might necessitate less storage space. You are also going to necessitate a TV tuner, if possible with DVR ability so you can record programs and skip commercials (you can purchase a standalone TV tuner or else improve your video card to one that contain a tuner), a PC AM/FM radio receiver and a remote-control setup, containing transmitter, receiver and, if you will be using an exterior receiver for your speakers, a control cable to attached your PC to the receiver.

[Hardwareman]

Technically, all the items above is needed (and maybe a little more than you need) to use your PC in your home theater. Your PC already has a built-in CD player and DVD player, so you simply need to connect your PC to your TV and your speaker setup using the available outputs on your computer. But if you want to really tie everything together into an integrated media center, you're going to want a piece of media-center software. The advantage to including a piece of software in your upgrade is the added benefit of the onscreen menu and integrated remote control functions that let you control everything through a single interface.

[Maxforu]

There is a group of media-center software out there with a multiplicity of characteristics. In general, a piece of software like Meedio Pro, Sage TV, InterVideo Home Theater or further than TV with Beyond Media lets you attach home theater trimmings to your computer and control it all through a solitary interface. You can stream music to additional computers, relocate data to a move able device, and observe your digital images or pictures on your large-screen TV.