Media Center PCs advice?

Hi all:

I'm contemplating buying a Media Center PC and would love any input you all may have. Do you have strong feelings either way about any specific Media Center PCs? HP seems to be the hot brand. If you have a Media Center PC, was it relatively easy to set up? Was it pretty simple to get it connected with your cable/satellite? Did you have to buy a lot of extra adapters, cables, etc.? I have a small studio apartment, so could my TV double as my computer screen or would I need a separate monitor? Any other words of wisdom?

Enormous thanks,
Jeremy

 

Don't have any experience with Media Center PC's, but I still think I can answer some of the questions. Setting up the internet should be simple since they should have LAN ports at the back. You wouldn't need any extra adapters other than what your cable/sat should give you when you subscribe. The TV should be able to be used as the computer screen since a machine like that is bound to have a video-out, but if you want to use it for surfing the web or working with documents and don't have a really sharp flat screen TV, I'd suggest buying a small LCD monitor for it.

 

I don't think it's as big a deal as pc manufactures want you to think, 'mediacenter' isn't really a technical term or anything.

i usually reccommend building your own, it's ALWAYS cheaper.

but, if you're not the kind to go rooting around inside a tower, just don't go dell.
you can't do any kind of modification to them, bugs the crap out of me. user friendly my ass. hp ain't bad from what i've seen of my brother use them, but i don't see it making any kind of difference really.

atleast 512MB ram, at minimum 2Ghz processor, 60-120gig HD
check for a good sound and video card, speakers and monitor

 

512MB ram, at minimum 2Ghz processor? Why ever would he want that for a computer used primarily for playing media? I have 256 MB of RAM and a 1.4 GHz, and when it comes to media, it runs everything flawlessly. If you want good picture quality, your focus should be the video card. As much as I love Nvidea, ATI would be the best choice in this case.

 

just says 'multimedia'

if all he's gonna do is play music and movies, i suggest a tv and a radio.

if he's going to do any editing, or rendering, i suggest some decent hardware.

 

Well, I don't know what he's trying to do, but I am thinking of building a simple machine like the one I was describing. I would use it to play my mp3's and watch ... um ... legally aquired movies without burning them on CD or DVD.