Woah, core 360s not useless!

[in5ane]

Just bought myself a Media Center PC (Sony XL100) this week. I'm not entirely happy with the output via HDMI, but that's besides the point. I am now enlightened with the information that MCEs don't suck like everyone says, and it's more than just a PC under your telly.

Last night I tried the 360 in conjunction with the MCE, and wow! It's not lame! There I was, able to stream internet radio, 1080p content and LIVE TV from the MCE and control/output it via the 360. Live Freeview TV, with guide, info, recording options, everything. In 720p. Oh, i was also online with MSN overlayed the top of the screen.

Seems kinda pointless in the same room as the MCE box, but, now a ?200 core box would be ideal in the bedroom. Hook this up to a second LCD, and voila, streaming HD content across my house. Being able to play Xbox games in the bedroom is just be the icing on the cake.

I could do away with the Sky SCART sender, and steam an upconverted s-video source to the bedroom. I could play co-op and 2 player games full screen on the 2 xboxes with friends. I could watch live TV in the front room, and my girlf could watch something recorded in the bedroom.

Now it makes sense to me why there is a crappier, cheaper Xbox 360, and once Vista hits with MCE-like capabilities, so will everyone else! I hear people here asking to scrap the Core and just have the premiuim, well I say make the core even cheaper, and I'll put one in every room of the house!

[Commander Marklar]

Plant

[recipher]

Kinda OT but...

I'm not entirely happy with the output via HDMI

You're still receiving SD signals via your freeview box, so the HDMI connection is neither here nor there, it might as well be s-video. I don't see how you can be watching 720p TV (is this what you meant?).

Or am I missing something?

[recipher]

You're right about the use for the Core 360 though. Shame the fan is so loud though (even when watching TV).

[in5ane]

Kinda OT but...


You're still receiving SD signals via your freeview box, so the HDMI connection is neither here nor there, it might as well be s-video. I don't see how you can be watching 720p TV (is this what you meant?).

Or am I missing something?

Well, everything on the PC is squirted thru HDMI to my plasma @ 720p. Obviously, grpahics cards with HDMI output only (no DVI or VGA here!) are very new, and as such drivers are specific and there's very little I can change without something not working. Also lots of other issues such as overscan and crazy compensating resolutions - hence not happy.

But yeah, i realise the freeview stuff is standard def, but it's all going thru the PC and one would hope, mostly staying digital right to my TV. The PC has enough grunt to resize the signals to 720p and look better than normal- I know I'm not getting proper HD TV Altho I did put my money down for Sky HD yesterday, gets installed early May

[recipher]

Gotcha.

It'll be interesting to see what it'll do with the Sky HD signal.

[SubparMario]

What graphics card does it have in it? Didn't know there were HDMI models yet.

[in5ane]

It's a wierd Geforce 6600 variant. Only has 128mb, but this isn't for games really. Altho playing MAME on a plasma over HDMI at 720p is just fantastic

[ascender]

I've dual booted my PC with MCE2005 so I can then stream HD stuff wirelessly to the 360 and on to the plasma. The setup works very well, although I'm not convinced MCE is the most streamlined bit of software.

[in5ane]

I did experiment with MCE before on an existing machine, and it didn't seem to work very well. From what I understand, it can be picky about hardware and stuff like that. Running it now on a purpose built MCE machine, everything is flawless, and the software itself is stunning. I love the way stuff moves and fades around, if only the Sky interface was this sophisticated!

[Bada Bing!]

I have media center running on my home PC now, and it's great. I can stream episodes of Lost as soon as I've downloaded them the day after they air in the US, I can view HDTV content that I've downloaded and get a first glimps of what it's going to look like, and I also managed to make a few asx files and play live streaming hardcore pr0n onto my 100" projector screen.

[Geezer]

Sorry to bump this up!

If I install a freeview card in my PC (with the MCE OS) and a wireless dongle on the 360 that is connected to my LCD, I can stream freeview to my LCD?
Will MCE upscale the freeview signal to 720p?

If this is possible, I can get rid of my freeview PVR as well as have the added benefit of having 640GB of space to record to instead of the 40GB on my PVR

Geezer