Best O/S for a Media Center?

[Rick Sanchez]

Hey,

Built myself a full HD media center and i was wondering what is the best operating system [64bit] to put on ?

For full HD TV and films mainly.

Thanks

[The Prodigy]

XBMC
or
MediaPortal

[Raptor]

http://tversity.com/

[tombott]

Do you have a TV card?
If so Myth TV, there is a Ubuntu version called Mythbuntu
Or install XBMC under Ubuntu

[Rick Sanchez]

No TV card atm looking to get a cable one to replace the Cable box/Dbox

[blacksheep]

what gfx card you got?

[crazyal]

Hiya

I've been using my PC for main TV and films for about 4 years now and have used XP and Vista in 32-bit & 64-bit flavours and find 32-bit to be more hassle-free tbh with regards to apps and utilities that I have gathered over that time.

For instance, stuff I want to keep gets converted to xvid overnight from windows own DVR-MS format. For example, The Gadget Show can be 2.4Gb and convert down to 250MB. Other utilities automatically remove the adverts from shows which really is a godsend.

I have a 6TB NAS that contains all my hi-def films and TV shows and this connects to both my living room and cinema room which currently runs W7 MC.

Obviously there are other MC front-ends out there, but it depends whether you dont mind doing a lot of tweaking around or want to keep it simple.

Will you be streaming stuff over a network or keeping stuff local on this machine? I only ask with regards hi-def material. Whatevber you do, don't go wireless networking - not even N. Nothing beats a piece of cable!

Cheers

Al

[liveseytowers]

I really liked XBMC running on an XP machine. Once you've got a nice skin for it that grabs all the movie info for you etc then its pretty cool. I used my iPhone as my remote for it as well which was handy.

Depends on if you want to use it to record TV etc like CrazyAl does or is it just for playing movies on.