Okay, everything’s working, though sadly with only 2Gb (which is not enough, honestly!)

I have played a bit of Day of Defeat before the football, just to check it works ;-) and then managed to get the TV card (not my Compro one) working by the 24th minute of the game.

And may I just say, Windows Media Center [sic] is the best piece of media software I’ve tried, and I’ve tried a few in the last few months! Showshifter, Media Portal, Compro’s PCTV, MSI’s PC-TV, Pinnacle’s PCTV — they’re all poor cousins of Windows Media Center.

For example, when you pause TV in any of the others, the PC chugs for a few seconds meaning you lose some of the programme — Media Center pauses instantly and resumes instantly too (assuming, that is, that the additional memory isn’t helping a little). Media Center’s user interface is accomplished and stable — it never crashes whereas all the others (except MSI’s PC-TV) crash at periodic intervals. Best of all, though, Media Center stores the last five or ten minutes of TV so that you can rewind and, because it’s stable, you can do this several times in a row without losing any viewing and as quickly as you could hope for (instantly).

AJD asked, why not get a Mac? The reasons are these:
1. I am a geek (hence the category) so I like to be able to download and play with all sorts of software; my PC is not a tool, it is a toy. My father uses Macs at his printing firm and they are great, especially OS X, but they are limited in the software available.
2. I want to be able to dual boot if possible. Now that Bootcamp is here, I am just waiting for Windows Vista to support the replacement for BIOS, EFI. When this happens a dual boot quality Mac and PC will be possible.
3. There isn’t so much hardware available for the Mac
4. Windows is getting better and better
5. I play games, and few reasonably priced Macs sport suitable graphics cards even when (2) happens.


Posted In: Geek, Technology