Turn Your Shiny Gaming Rig Into an Awesome Xbox 360 Media Center Extender

Only two ingredients are necessary to cook up a fabulous Xbox 360 Media Center Extender. Got an Xbox 360? Got a PC running Media Center 2005? Toss in a pinch of WiFi connectivity and Viola! Your Xbox 360 just turned into the main course in your Home Theater System.

Doesn't get much easier than that!

And you thought all you could do was play games! Why not watch movies, view your recorded TV shows, and enjoy your downloaded music collection, all from the same little silver box that serves up hours of gaming goodness?

The Xbox 360 Media Center Extender connects directly with your PC either wirelessly (54MB/s 802.11g) or with a 100MB/s Ethernet cable. For serious video streaming, I'd recommend using the hardwired Ethernet option. Especially if you have multiple WiFi devices in your house, such as laptops.

If you purchased the Xbox 360 "Fully Loaded" package, you've already got the dedicated remote complete with a "Green Button" for controlling the Xbox 360 media center extender functions. The media center interface should look familiar. It's the exact replica of your MCE menu. This makes for easy navigation and total control of your console. All your familiar menu choices are available through the Xbox media center extender such as My TV, My Music, etc. In fact, it's hard to tell you're not in front of your Media Center PC!

Even if you don't have a Media Center PC, you can enjoy some of the benefits of the built in Xbox media center functionality. You can use the included media player to stream music and photos from any PC that's running Windows XP.

Brad is the creative and passionate force behind [http://www.MediaCenterPCguide.com] Want to experience the ultimate in home entertaiment? Come visit us at [http://www.MediaCenterPCguide.com] for all you need to know about turning your bland PC into the central component of your home theater system.

Why Media Center PC is Not Going to Be Mainstream Next 5 Years

"HTPC, XBMC, Plex, NAS, media extenders, media centers, media servers, media streamers and so on are given to technology enthusiastics, but mean very little to average consumers."

The more and more I read gadget and technology websites I start to understand what prevents media centers to become mainstream. To be fair, of course digital living room is about technology to some extent, but technology is not the key reason which prevents digital living room to become a mainstream.

First of, the competitive landscape is too fragmented for any viable standard to emerge. For example, if you think about watching traditional TV shows on TV, you do not need to worry about which codec you need to use or if your TV is powerful enough to view a specific TV program. Frankly, consumers are confused what to buy and how to use them. They are intimidated with the all the confusion around the subject, so they rather stay away from the media center market. And no wonder, we have cryptic words like HTPC, XBMC, Plex, NAS, we have media extenders, media centers, media servers, media streamers and so on that are given to technology enthusiastics, but mean very little to average consumers.

Microsoft's "I am a PC and I am 4 1/2 years old" video advertisement has become a huge hit around the internet and it is an excellent demonstration what kind of messages technology companies should be sending to markets. Too many companies are focusing on providing better hardware and more shinier software, but at the end of the day mainstream does not care about that. In order to cross the chasm between technology enthusiasts and mainstream markets they need to demonstrate what is it for the end users and how easily they can do what ever they are interested to do with their computer in the living room.

Most probably media centers are not going to become mainstream in the next 5 years or so. They will remain a niche segment, but a viable one, as there are enough early adopters and developers to keep pushing open source projects to improve media centers and other software around the topic. Companies such as Apple, Microsoft and Dell continue experimenting with various products to test which gets people excited, but they do not use too big budgets on R and D as they know that there are not enough consumers in the media center pc and mac markets.

This does not prevent us continuing spreading the word about the benefits of having a computer in the living room. To me it just emphasizes the importance of sites like mymediaexperience.com that encourages people to enter into the digital living room.

Continue reading about building digital living room

More media center related articles at http://mymediaexperience.com

HP Pavilion Media Center TV m7350n PC

Let us start at the very beginning when we get to know this computer called HP Pavilion Media Center TV m7350n PC. You may be interested to know that this computer has many names and some of its aliases are:

oHP Pavilion Media Center EL406AA

oHP Pavilion Media Center TV m7350n

oHP Pavilion Media Center

oHewlett-Packard EL406AA

oOr simply as the Hewlett-Packard TV m7350n.

Such technology is expected to be really functional. What's in the HP Pavilion Media Center TV that makes it unique? For one, the HP Pavilion Media Center TV m7350n PC has an Intel processor with processor class D. It has a processing speed of 2.8 GHz, and a 2 GB installed memory. Its BUS speed is 800 MHz and a cache size of 4 MB. The memory technology is DDR II SDRAM with a maximum memory of 4 GB. The system chipset is Intel 945P Express.

Further, the hard drive has a storage capacity of 250 GB. Its CD Read Speed is 40X, the CD Write Speed is 40X, the CD Rewrite Speed is 32X, and the DVD Read Speed is 16X. It comes with Serial ATA Drive Controllers as well. The 2nd CD Read Speed is 16X.

For graphics and the monitor, you get a plug-in card for video integration and 64 MB of installed video memory. For networking and communications functions, your HP Pavilion Media Center TV m7350n PC has a 56 Kbps modem speed, and both Fast Ethernet and Ethernet for network support.

The interface connectors you get with your HP Pavilion Media Center TV m7350n PC are three forms of line-out: line-out (center/subwoofer), line-out (rear), and line-out (side surround.) On one hand, the expansion slot types of your HP Pavilion Media Center TV m7350n PC accommodate an XD-Picture Card, SD Memory Card, Memory Stick, SmartMedia Card, PCI Express x16, a CompactFlash Card, Memory, Processor, and PCI.

This type of computer uses Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 as its operating system (or OS.)The OS comes with these different software programs:

oMicrosoft Office 2003 Student and Teacher Edition (Trial)

oMuvee autoProducer

oHP Image Zone

oRealPlayer

oSonic MyDVD

oPC-Doctor 5 for Windows

oA 60-day subscription to Norton Internet Security 2005 AntiSpyware

oAdobe Reader 7.0

oSonic DigitalMedia Plus

oMicrosoft Works 8.0

oAnd InterVideo WinDVD 5

Moreover, the keyboard and mouse are the input devices provided. You can buy the appropriate monitor via a separate purchase as an independent unit.

And now that we know all that techie mumbo-jumbo, it brings us to the most important question: what can it do for us? Well, to start with, it makes for an excellent paperweight, especially if you accidentally plug it into the wrong power source which then renders the insides fried and useless. However, that doesn't justify the expense. Unless you'll take a closer look at it, you'll never appreciate this computer. So let us look deeper.

Since this computer is actually a Media Center, that gives those of you who love your entertainment a ray of hope. For one thing, you can record, and create video recordings to a maximum of 170 hours. The Image Zone software (an exclusive technology of Hewlett Packard) permits you to edit, organize, then store and protect any video clips and photos you feel are worth preserving. You can also create personalized CDs and DVDs with this baby. And there is much, much more it can do - but you need to read the manual for that to get at the nitty gritty technical details.

Should you buy this product then? Well, that's really up to you - if you feel you really need all those high-tech features for both your leisure and work, then this is a great investment. Depending on your usage, the HP Pavilion Media Center is a cool state-of-the art technology for your personal and business needs.

Marcus Rollingston writes on various topics which includes Satellite TV,For more information check out http://topsatellitetvforpcservices.blogspot.com Where you can get informative HP Pavilion Media Center TV m7350n PC

Ten Tips For Building Your Own Media Center Computer

With new faster processors, bigger hard drives and new larger LCD televisions building a media center computer has become more and more practical. A media center computer can record multiple television shows at one time, can organize all your music and pictures and can also be used as a normal computer. They are definitely very cool. However, before you decide to build your own media center here are ten quick tips...

1. Consider building a machine with a dual core or quad core processor. The multiple processing threads will be very useful when recording multiple programs and watching a program at the same time. A fast multi core processor is a must if you plan on watching and recording hi definition TV.

2. Don't skimp on the RAM. A good media center will have at least 2GB of ram and should probably have up to 4GB. The ram will help keep things moving quickly while you are recording programs.

3. You can never have enough hard drive space. With high definition TV becoming more of a standard you are going to want to consider having large amounts of hard drive space on your machine. I wouldn't build a machine that had less than a terabyte of hard drive space.

4. To increase performance considering using a raid configuration for your hard drives. Using raid zero along with high speed SATA hard drives can help you improve video performance and can prevent recording errors.

5. Get good TV tuner cards with built in hardware encoding. Tuner cards with MPEG hardware encoding will take a load off your processor when they record tv shows, this will help ensure that you won't get any skipping or problems in your recorded output. I use Hauppauge cards in my machine and they work great.

6. Invest in a good decoding program. The software decoder software offered by Nvidia does a good job on my media center. However, I tested four or five different ones before I found one that operated the way I wanted with my hardware configuration. Be prepared to test some different options before you settle on the one that will work best for you.

7. Don't forget to order the remote control. A media center without a remote control is a travesty. These computers are designed to operated while you sit back on your couch. The remotes don't cost that much and they work great.

8. Buy the best video card that you can afford. The better the video card that you have the less chances you have that you will have problems with playback. Before you buy your video card also make sure to check the list of Media Center approved cards. If the card isn't on there you might want to avoid it. Also make sure that you buy a video card that has a high definition output that matches your TV (either DVI or HDMI are the best).

9. Get a good audio card that is capable of feeding source audio to your receiver or your speakers. If you plan on outputting 5.1 or 7.1 data from DVD's you are going to want to make sure that the sound card that you pick has an optical or digital coax output. You might also consider buying a card that will convert all the sounds used on your computer into a 5.1 or 7.1 digital audio feed.

10. Be prepared to play with your configuration and build. Unfortunately, building a media center is not an exact science and there is usually quite a bit of tinkering involved in getting a stable fully functional system. If you aren't comfortable playing with the settings and the drivers to get things to work you might consider buying a prebuilt media center and have someone else do the testing and configuring for you.

I have been running windows XP media center edition for quite a while now and I love it. I have built two different media centers and they have both been a blast. Try it for yourself and see.

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How to Use Mac Mini As Media Center, the Perfect Mac HTPC

We have a lot of media center solutions out there and to choose the perfect setup for yourself can be challenging. It all depends on what you are planning to do with your media center setup. For me, I want to view downloaded content and my own movies I have stored on my external hard drive for backup purposes. Recording from TV is not in my interest.

As the title suggests I prefer to use the Mac Mini for this purpose, however I want to talk a little bit about the other options I have tried. This will make you better understand why I went this route in the first place.

First, the Xbox 360. This is a game console with media capabilities, and it worked okay. I had this console as a media center for a while but some times it wont play certain file formats. If that is the case I had to re encode some of them and it is time consuming and nothing I want to do on a regular basis. Because of that I continued to use the Xbox as it was meant to be used, playing games.

We also have the Apple TV. This was a pretty nice device actually, but the real drawback was that it only supported files iTunes could play. Same thing here as the Xbox. Re encoding of media, time consuming = nothing for me. This unit can however be hacked, and it will then play almost any kind of media. Because of the slow CPU in this unit it will only play up to 720p video, and therefore. Not acceptable for me.

Then we have the Popcorn Hour A-110. After the Mac Mini this would be the best choice. This unit could play all kinds of files I threw at it. It also did tackle high resolution video without any problems at all. The price was alright and it worked just fine. It gets firmware upgrades now and then and the community around the device is active.

But,

The interface of Popcorn Hour is in my opinion, slow, ugly, and playing music on this device is not a good experience at all. I found it to be acceptable, but still. I also want to have good music capabilities.

And now, the Mac Mini. The biggest reason for me wanting to use Mac Mini is the free media center application called Plex. This free software impress me every time I use it. It is developed just for the Mac, while still in beta version as of this writing the software works well. This will run perfectly on the Mac Mini, and it does on my base model. Another thing that impress me is the way the library in plex works. It actually scans the file names of say, your movie folder. Then it looks up information about that movie using the Internet and downloads the synopsis, cover and artwork all automatically. This is what I like the most about this.

The other reason for me wanting to get the Mac Mini despite the fact it costs more is because this is a fully fledged computer. You can run any number of services on this little machine if you want. Share your internet connection, use it as router, firewall, web-serve, you name it. While still using it as a HTPC.

True, it costs a little bit more but I believe it is worth it.

Author: B. Kibsgaard

Read more about the Mac Mini Media Center Setup here: http://www.all-about-apple.com/mac-mini-as-media-center.html

All About Apple: http://www.all-about-apple.com

Media Center Desktop Computers

Media center computers are above all, the most technologically equipped of all computers. They could easily be called super computers. Media center computers not only do everything, they also offer increased speed and better functionality. These top notch computers specialize in presentation and media performance. Here is a more focused look into media center computers.

The Essentials

Media center computers come standard with large hard drives, usually 500GB, to accommodate the function which allows you to store recorded television programming, videos, and a host of multimedia. The dual processors allow increased performance. While one is storing memory, the other is helping to speed up your computer. These processors also contain other hidden functions that optimize the rate of transferred data and double execution speed, all while saving power. Computer RAM starts around 2GB and can be expanded in the most advanced computers, up to 16GB! The CD/DVD drives are dramatically improved to accept all of the latest disk formats and can provide burning speeds up to 40x!

Visual and Audio

This area is where these computers outshine all others. Computers generally connect to screens using a VGA attachment. In a media center computer, the graphics card enables a user to connect to a large screen using the latest HDMI technology. This technology offers accelerated, mind blowing high definition viewing from your computer! These graphics cards give the option of using much larger screens because they offer the highest standard 1080i resolution. They also feature surround sound audio integration and built in TV tuners.

Connectivity and Expansion

Expansion and connectivity possibilities are advanced in these computers. They normally feature at least 3 expansion slots, 2 extra hard drive bays, and several USB ports for small peripherals. Media center desktop computers also have FireWire connections and multi-card readers which allows superb connections from any media device.

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3 Questions to Ask Yourself Before that Media Center PC Purchase

1. What is the purpose of this machine?

This is one question everyone should ask themselves before buying a Media Center PC. Be honest with yourself because this answer dictates the answers to the rest of the questions.

The purpose of your Media Center should be just that. As a Media Center. Movies, music, pictures, internet, and anything else you want to do. The Media Center is not intended to do your taxes, or write your term paper. Do not get us wrong, it is completely capable of doing these tasks. The point of this question is to narrow down what kind of hardware you will need to do what you want your machine to do. Keep this in mind. What do you want your Media Center PC to do?

2. What kind of software should my Media Center PC use?

This is a question that is up for much debate. However, your answer to this question and the previous question will answer the last question. There are 2 basic thoughts on this, either Windows OS, or Linux OS. It really depends on your comfort level and what you want to accomplish with your Media Center PC. Lets breakdown strong points and weak points of each.

Windows

o Strong Point : Known for its point and click ease

o Strong Point : Works with most if not all hardware

o Strong Point : Allot of software options to go with

o Weak Point : Hefty price tag. For Media Center Edition you are looking between 100-200 dollars just for the software

o Weak Point : Known for their security issues. Updates, after updates, after updates.

o Weak Point : Must run virus software and firewall software. This is a must for security.

Linux OS

o Strong Point : Extremely stable. No need to reboot ever. After updates, you just restart

the program you are running and the update is applied. No reason to restart the system.

o Strong Point : Extremely secure. No need to run virus software or firewall software. This makes it use less resources hardware wise. Thus making it run on lower end PC's.

o Strong Point : Extremely configurable. If you dont like something, change it. Literally anything in Linux you can change and optimize and tailor to your hardware, reducing hardware requirements further.

o Strong Point : Completely 100% free. Not only is the OS free, most software you run on the OS is free. Yes, that is right, free.

o Weak Point : If you have never used Linux, it can be hard to setup and get running the first time.

o Weak Point : Not as much software available as Windows. There is software available for anything you want to do. Just not as much as Windows.

3. How much should I pay for my Media Center PC?

This question is answered by the first 2 you asked yourself. The requirements of Linux are much lower to do the same thing as Windows. Think about this. The Tivo runs with a 54Mhz processor. Now ask yourself this. Why would you want to spend thousands of dollars on the latest and greatest hardware out there, when it would be a lot cheaper for you to use different hardware? You could spend 2000 dollars and upwards on a new Dual Core system with 2 gigs of ram, a monster video card, and the best of everything. What do you gain though? It wont play the HD any better. It wont make your picture look better. You gain no benefits. You could spend a little and get a Media Center PC that does anything you want, or you could spend alot and get the same Media Center PC that does the same things. Its up to you.