The best PC configuration for a MCE/media PC?

[Rupp]

I know some of you guys have added enough hardware to your systems to know what is the best hardware (especially graphics cards) to use in a media/MCE PC.

[electron]

the slowest MCE box I have (eventho it works fine):
* AMD 1.2Ghz Tbird
* 256 megs of PC133 memory
* 80 gig drive
* PVR 250 (retail)
* Antec Overture case
* ATI 7000 series video card with 64megs of ram (minimum required)

fastest MCE box:
* 3.0 (or 3.2, forgot) Ghz, HT/800FSB
* 512 megs of ram
* 200gig HD space
* PVR 250 MCE version (OEM)
* Radeon 9600 Pro with HDTV adapter
* Silverstone case

The reason you can get away with a 'slower' MCE machine is because the TV encoding is done onboard of the PVR250 series instead of having the OS doing the coding. Let me know if you want any other details.

[smee]

A good hardware capture card (like the PVR250) will work well in a slower machine to capture video. Where you tend to take the hit is in playback or viewing live TV. The computer must decode mpeg2 (the native format of the PVR250) in real time - slower machines may use a very high percentage of CPU to do this, possible interfering with other simultaneous actions (like recording).