Adequate for Vista?

[Harold]

I am leaning towards moving to Vista Media Center as the front end for my HTPC. I started with BM and then moved to Media Portal. The support for plugins is fading as the user community, particularly for BM, gets smaller. Much of the functionality I would like to see in a HTPC is based on pulling in web content. BM media just barely handled music and DVD playback and while it had some cool plugins initially, they are withering. I plan to stay with BTV for PVR tasks.

My current box has 1 GB of ram and is an Intel MB with a 3.8 Ghz Pentium CPU. I record OTA HD and analog cable.

At some point I need to redo the hardware to get Blue Ray support, but I was hoping the current configuration was adequate to handle Media Center.

[Harold]

Correction 2.8 GHz CPU (not 3.8 GHz).

[Maximo]

I would say no. I have vista on my laptop and it uses almost 1 gb of ram most of the time. The CPU, I am not sure about but once again not very likely.

I know it is not what you want to hear, but I would hate for you to pay for a vista license and then have to upgrade your computer. Instead, go here. www.dell.com/outlet The deals are amazing when you consider that you pay about $170 for just a vista license.

You can thank me later.

(ps. it updates quantities ever 15 minutes).

[Harold]

I blindly pressed on anyway. I added 1 GB or Ram and went with the Upgrade.

RAM seems to stay under 1 GB and CPU is under 20% for NTSC TV and about 35 to 40% for DTV.

NTSC TV looks fine. DTV has some issues that I think are MPEG decoder related since RAM and CPU do not appear to be taxed.

When I wiped and loaded the drive, I forgot to back up my 3rd party decoders. I'd like to point BTV to the Vista MPEG 2 decoders, but I'm still researching how to do this.

I plan to do a general HW upgrade in the future to get Blue Ray. So that means new MB, CPU, etc.

[Maximo]

What kind of vid card are you using right now?

[Harold]

The video card is an Nvidia 6600GT. DTV content played back in Windows Media Player (presumably with the Vista SP1 MPEG 2 decoders) seems to be fine.

I'd like to point BTV to the VIsta decoders and see if this fixes it.