media center

And you can schedule it to run the processes at off-peak hours....
I think it can automatically remove commercials too.

Quoted: DVRMSToolbox - Convert DVR-MS files to MPEG, WMA, and WMV formats. - Review and free download at Download.com

Wiki for the "7" Media Center PC.

$50 Manufacturer Instant Rebate at Office Depot makes this loaded Media Center PC $580.

Quoted: HP Media Center m7250n Photosmart Desktop Computer With Intel® Pentium® D Processor 820 Operating At 2.8GHz at Office Depot. Taking Care of Business.

Quoted: The Premier Community of Enthusiasts of the Microsft Windows Vista Media Center and Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition 2005. Expert advice, news, tips & tricks, downloads......Got questions about Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition? The Green Button is the place to go. You'll find answers to all your MCE questions, forums to discuss the latest updates, and even some useful downloads

Anyone tried these "home-brew" Media PC solutions. Seems pretty tempting (but then again, I've got a big backlog of "projects" in my life already).

Need to look at this vs. online storage. It can hold 200 DVDs or CDs. One extremely cool feature is you can load it with your CD collection and batch rip! It will also play DVDs via MCE's interface. Need to figure out how flexible it is ... SDK, alternate OS compatibility, etc. Tempting to wait for a BD version, but $399.99 after rebate isn't THAT ridiculous.

I could recover some of the cost by offering "CD ripping services" for people with big collections :)

Quoted: Amazon.com: Sony VGP-XL1B2 Media Changer (also: VGP-XL1B): Computers & PC Hardware

Great TV Tuner card for MCE. Hybrid cards are pretty common, but this one is unique in having a hardware MPEG-2 encoder for its NTSC tuner (in addition to its ATSC tuner for OTA HD).

That means you get two tuners which operate at the same time for the cost of one PCI slot. Cheaper than the hybrid ATI 650 with no hardware encoder for its analog NTSC tuner (and you can only use one tuner at a time).

Yet another reason to get a Wii (although the Xbox ships with such a feature).

Quoted: Wii Media Center X is a free multimedia server developed by Red Kawa. It allows you to stream certain types of pictures, music, videos and files from your computer (where the server running) to your Nintendo Wii. It runs on most major operating systems including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Quoted: We thought of one thing while we were creating the Hannibal. What would we want in our living rooms? It sounds selfish but, more to the point, its the way things should be made. Most other