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r81984
Fair and Balanced
Premium Member
join:2001-11-14
Katy, TX

r81984 to marcograyo

Premium Member

to marcograyo

Re: [Discussion] Building a computer for my TV

I used XP MCE for about 6 years and then I upgraded in August to Win7. I only had a sempron 3300 2Ghz with 768mb ram. Surprising Win7 worked just fine, but it would lag going through menus especially if you remote desktop going and were burning something.

All bought from Frys.

Intel Core i3 540 LGA1156 - $80.00
Motherboard - MSI H55M-E33 - $71.24
1 stick 4GB DDR3 1800Mhz - $110
2TB WD Green Drive - $90.00
TV Tuner - Diamond HD7750 PCIE - $60.00
TV Tuner - Diamond HD USB 650 - $30.00
I already had a case/power supply/drives/ir remote and keyboard.

I suggest getting the RF Gyration MCE remote/mouse (best remote ever created, RF so no line of sight needed): »red-planet-trading.amazo ··· GP2S.htm
And the IR Keyboard/mouse (only needed if you want to type or surf the web): »www.amazon.com/Microsoft ··· 00AOAAN8
An MCE ir receiver with ir blaster (needed to control cable box) can be had for 20 to 30

I have DMA2200 media center extender I bought new for $100 off ebay. For some reason media center extenders do not come with volume control so I built an external lcd volume control from a $40 kit off ebay, $15 project box from frys and a $8 transformer from frys.

The only complaints about these cheaper tv tuner cards is the USB would get a "low bit rate" error and you would have to unplug it and plug it in and it would also crash MCE periodically.
The PCIE card is much more stable, but it has crashed MCE about once a few weeks which all you have to do is hit the MCE button the remote to reopen MCE.
It seems budget tv tuners are going to have some issues.