It's official, I now use a computer entertainment center

[gshelley61]

Sorry if anyone took my first post the wrong way.

No problem. Sometimes the tone of a post doesn't reflect the intent. Sorry for calling you a dumbass.

Yeah, and I really like CRT projectors, but my living room is too small for that type of setup. My max viewing distance is only about 9 feet and the large CRT projectors would look pretty intrusive hanging from my ceiling (read: no way wife would let me do that... :P ). I went with the DLP RPTV because of the small, lightweight form factor and very good PQ.

The best HT system I've personally seen was in a basement dedicated (dark) room using a NEC data projector with 9" CRT's (max res is something like 2500x2000!). The guy had a sophisticated HTPC running it with a very nice scaler/quadrupler. I think he had about a 10 or 11 foot screen. Awesome. I haven't seen anything better since.

[ChrisX]

I tried out on of those Windows XP Media Center Edition computers for PVR usage. Sadly I was not impressed with the quality of the video in the least, I kept trying to tell myself it was fine but eventually I just couldn't take it anymore. I was giving about a gillion tips to fix it over on greenbutton but nothing worked. Persoanlly I think the capture cards they are using may be a bit weak for the job.

Yes, they are a bit weak for the job of viewing something using the video card on the PVR.

On the PC, not as good as watching the DVD movie on the TV or recording from the TV using the VCR or the DVR.

My PC's PVR is a bit dark and unclear to watch a movie from the DVD player and the TV broadcast.

I do occasionally check on the PVR just for the news from a TV broadcast coming from a digital recorder and this is fine when I am busy nearby on another computer.

I am better off recording a television show on the digital recorder than the computer's capture program as so much brighter, clearer and better on the TV.

[jakol]

i use win xp media center edition pc to watch/record tv shows in our den, the video quality is okay, my only complaints are:
1.changing the channel from the remote seems too slow
2. the remote is very basic..no fav. channel button, no sleep button etc.

one thing i like though is you can pause, rewind the tv show ur watching.

[Faustus]

i use win xp media center edition pc to watch/record tv shows in our den, the video quality is okay, my only complaints are:
1.changing the channel from the remote seems too slow
2. the remote is very basic..no fav. channel button, no sleep button etc.

one thing i like though is you can pause, rewind the tv show ur watching.

Well personally let me say that I see major macro blocks just watching a football game on my Dishnetwork, that should tell everyone right there that I'm very sensitive to them, my friends swear they can't see them. I guess it comes with messing with encoders so much.

That being said the MCE unit I used did have some pretty bad macro blocking issues when viewed on the computer screen. Many claimed it wouldn't be the case outputted to the TV but 1) I didn't have a TV close enough to test with and 2) I can't see how they would mysteriously dissapear just because I'm outputting to a different source.

Anyway thats why I've written off any of the MCE units until such a time as I find a store that has one setup and running with TV stations that I can check the quality on.

As to the remote... I agree the remote is good. But could be SO much better. And yeah it changes channels slowly.