I bought a Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleo E Media Centre PC back in December 2005. I had recently become paralysed following a car accident, and had lost all dexterity in my fingers, so handling CDs and/or my precious vinyl collection was a nightmare. I decided that before I completely ruined them with scratches I'd go digital, get a media centre pc and start ripping.
It all works fine - I've got the twin freeview tuners model with a 250Gb HDD, linked through a Cambridge Azur 540c amp for sound, and a Samsung LE26R87BD LCD TV for pictures. And let's face it, Windows Media Centre is pretty easy to use, so navigating around my large music collection, recording from the TV using the program guide, etc etc is a doddle. The family love it.
Gripes - running out of hard disk space with over 600 CDs already ripped, and this seems to impact performance significantly; the picture quality is and always has been poor, and I've never been able to set the resolution properly (rubbish graphics card); it's quite big, it's quite noisy, the remote and the front ports (USB, SD cards etc) are knackered (kids!), and I want a change.
I can't stretch to a new media centre pc like the highly rated I.US XPCHD, so I'm looking at a Western Digital WD TV purely for my music (with a 1TB drive so I can rip in lossless formats), something like a BT Vision box for freeview TV and recording, and then a token DVD player for family friday video nights. My main priority is my music.
Has anyone experienced the WD TV and if so, what's the verdict? And what are the best value freeview boxes and DVD players? I guess I'm looking at around £150 for the WD TV and HDD, and if I can get away with another £200 for a freeview box and DVD player I'd be a happy tetra!
Thanks
Mr Lenny
It all works fine - I've got the twin freeview tuners model with a 250Gb HDD, linked through a Cambridge Azur 540c amp for sound, and a Samsung LE26R87BD LCD TV for pictures. And let's face it, Windows Media Centre is pretty easy to use, so navigating around my large music collection, recording from the TV using the program guide, etc etc is a doddle. The family love it.
Gripes - running out of hard disk space with over 600 CDs already ripped, and this seems to impact performance significantly; the picture quality is and always has been poor, and I've never been able to set the resolution properly (rubbish graphics card); it's quite big, it's quite noisy, the remote and the front ports (USB, SD cards etc) are knackered (kids!), and I want a change.
I can't stretch to a new media centre pc like the highly rated I.US XPCHD, so I'm looking at a Western Digital WD TV purely for my music (with a 1TB drive so I can rip in lossless formats), something like a BT Vision box for freeview TV and recording, and then a token DVD player for family friday video nights. My main priority is my music.
Has anyone experienced the WD TV and if so, what's the verdict? And what are the best value freeview boxes and DVD players? I guess I'm looking at around £150 for the WD TV and HDD, and if I can get away with another £200 for a freeview box and DVD player I'd be a happy tetra!
Thanks
Mr Lenny