Playing the convergence game

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I'd say less of nightmare actually

I see the PC as an ideal solution for term of technical diffculty. For example: your DVD player dies so you have to go out and buy a new one. This can be costly as a new one can cost anywhere from $70 to $200 depending on what you need. If a basic one is all you need then it's not very expensive. If you need component video and fibre optic sound you are looking at paying more.

You could have PC with Sound Blaster live and Optical Digital IO card that connects to the sound card. Then you can get ATI Radeon video card and get ATI's HDTV Component Video Adapter. Put a DVD Player in the and a pair of 180 GB hard drives then add a infra red remote accessed by Palm as No_Axe made me aware of then you have sweet system.

Now if you DVD players laser goes on you then swap out the DVD player, should cost you only $26 as you don't need the license for the decoder again. Bad hard drive? Swap it out. Bad video card, never happened to me yet, but swap it out. All the components individually should cost you less than the cost of PS2 with exception of some video cards.

Now I'm not sure what Windows Media Center does but it seems to me you can do everything with Window XP just fine. If you spend some money on a custom case you can get it to suit you home entertainment system. If you have need connect it to the network and access you all purpose PC for what ever. That's where I'd put a DVD burner, digital camer, scanner and printer.

Now if you only use the Entertainment PC for watching movies, playing music, and such there is no installs. Installs and un-installs of all sorts of software from games to demo and shareware are what really causes Windows to crash. So you wouldn't see the troubles you see with you all purpose PC. If you do choose to put it on you home network though, make sure your patches and anti-virus up to date.

One of these days I'm going to have to get myself that Palm and a custom case to do this.

Posted by: voska   Posted on: 08/16/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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