Numpty's Guide Please

[Dan Dare]

Hi All

I need a numpty's guide to HDTV and Windows Media Center etc

I'm about to buy a 50" 1080p HDTV and want to use my spangly new vista ultimate PC to run all my media to the TV

I have a 32 bit Vista Ultimate 1Gb Ram and a nVidia Geforce 7300 card which comes with a HDMI and S-Video port.

I will use the HDMI port to run the TV eventually, but what I need is a guide to how I should actually set up WMC, how I should arrange my HDD to effectivley use WMC and what format and setup to rip my DVD collection to a external USB drive (which will become a NAS drive soon).

I dont want to rip to DivX as the quality loss isnt acceptable.

Cheers

Dan

[redwudz]

One place to start with some links to other info is the Wikipedia site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Center

I'm guessing 'numpty' is a alternate term for 'novice'.

You can modify WMC to access external drives this way: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930526

And you would likely get more answers in our Media Center Forum. Moving you.

[steptoe]

Numpty is quite a common term in UK for the complete beginner or the apparently popular but I find offensive titles of the 'Complete Idiots Guide' series of books that appear to cover a very wide range of subject from wine making to sex

I am not an idiot and having big letters in the book title saying this does mean I avoid these books

[Dan Dare]

Yes, Numpty means "novice". Lol!

I also prefer Numpty to idiot, especially as everyone outside the Uk normally finds it amusing!

"What a Numpty!" Bwahahaha! See!

Well it makes me laugh!

Thanks for advice

[redwudz]

I use 'neophyte' in my member description as no one knows everything, especially with video.

You might take a look at this media center forum: http://www.xpmediacentre.com.au/community/index.php They 'sort of' speak English. (Australian site. ) Some very intense members there and good info.

EDIT: Another MCE site I stumbled upon with lots of links: http://www.moremce.com/

[yoda313]

FYI I actually kinda like the FOR DUMMIES series of books. Dummies isn't too deragotory. And they are actually quite informative.

Just so I can make this a useful post here is another link REDWUDZ actually made in another post in this series about WMC:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930526

That is for playing vobs off a harddrive in wmc. FYI it is a regedit so if your not comfortable with editing the registry this may not be for you.

[RabidDog]

I dont want to rip to DivX as the quality loss isnt acceptable.

Divx quality is generally a trade off between file-size and encoding time. DIvx is a more efficient way of compressing Video than Mpeg2 so two files of equal size, the divx one will probably look better. People generally compress to divx to save space and/or delivery bitrate. There is no reason why a divx/xvid/avc file should look any worse than the original source, unless it's been over compressed, or does a very quick, low quality encode. Divx and Xvid are interchangeable in 97.2% of cases.. pretty much any device that will play back divx will also play xvid.
avc/h264 is even more efficient at compressing video than xvid/divx, but requires the playback device to have more cpu power, due to its extra complexity. Lecture oVer.

[guns1inger]

First thing I would do it upgrade to at least 2 and probably 3 GB RAM. Vista bites in 1 GB or less.