I just thought I would impart some perhaps helpful advice for those of you
building or thinking of building your own Media Center PC. I was new to MCE
2005 a couple of months ago and it has been a rollercoaster ride but I have
now eventually got the system working as I want it.
First of all make sure that the hardware you purchase is MCE compliant.
Motherboards are so clear as I would guess that the majority will work ok but
stay away from PCChips and other horrible cheap makes. I use an MSI
motherboard which is a cheap(ish) make but a very good make in my opinion
with some good features. Get as much memory and hard drive space as you can
afford. The TV Tuner and graphics card definately need to be MCE
compliant...don't even think about anything else! The type of processor to
get depends on what you want to use it for so for games you might want to
consider a higher end processor. I am only going to use mine for recording
and watch TV, playing music and creating DVD's etc.
The next thing you need to keep in mind is that MCE 2005 is OEM software so
when you install and configure the PC it won't always be as straightforward
as installing XP Home/Pro editions. You *may* also need to tweak your BIOS a
bit so that MCE's power management works correctly.
Before I continue with the steps of how I setup my MCE 2005 PC its worth
mentioning that the steps I followed below were only put together as I wasn't
happy with the first installation I did! This was probably because I did a
fair amount of playing around with settings and trying various MCE software
DVD decoder plugins and it got to the point when I paused live TV MCE would
then stop working so I decided to do a fresh install and I have reaped the
benefits of doing so having now got the DVD decoder pack I want. I use the
Sonic DVD decoder pack for MCE which is excellent and it only cost me £9.99
and downloaded off Sonic's website.
Go to
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...e/plugins.aspx for
more details.
1. Install MCE 2005 but do NOT install the extra updates CD which comes with
the 2 MCE installation CD's which has Rollup 2 on it. Do not even download
rollup 2 and install it either.
2. Install netowork drivers to that the internet works. Install Firewall and
Antivirus software.
2. Do a Windows update so that all critical updates/fixes are installed. You
may need to do a windows update 2 or 3 times before all updates are installed
at this point.
3. Install .NET framework 1.1
4. Do another windows update so that .NET framework 1.1 SP1 is installed and
then do another windows update so that .NET 1.1 has its critical updates
downloaded.
4. Once all updates have been downloaded at this point you can now install
Rollup 2 or use the extra CD that came with the MCE 2005 installation CD's
which will also install Rollup 2 as well as other hotfixes. You will need to
do another Windows update to check to see if any other updates are required
to be downloaded.
5. Install drivers for your graphics card and TV tuner if Windows update
hasn't already done so for you. Make sure they are MCE drivers and not just
normal XP windows drivers. This is certainly the case if you have an ATI
Radeon card.
6. Install MCE compliant DVD decoder pack (Sonic, Nvidia, Intervideo and
Cyberlink etc are suitable - see link above). I use the Sonic DVD MCE decoder
pack which is excellent.
7. Startup MCE and run through the configuration and scan for TV channels etc.
8. After scanning for channels I found out that MCE doesn't always choose
the strongest signal and so what I did was to use my set top box (STB) to
check what frequencies were being use for each of the channels. I found that
MCE had chosen a frequency 505Mhz instead of the stronger 554Mhz for BBC1,
BBC2, CBBC and BBC News 24 etc..for where I live down here in Sussex where I
receive my TV transmissions from the Reigate transmitter which is relay
transmitter for Crystal Palace.
9. If you go to Settings > TV > Guide you will see the option Edit Channel
Listings. In here you can see what frequencies are being used for the enabled
channels with ticks besides them. If you find that a weaker frequency is
being used then remove the tick and then find in the same list the same
channel with the stronger frequency without a tick beside it and place a tick
beside it. Select Save and then edit the channel order as you will need to
swap around the channels you have disabled and enabled so that the channel
order stays the same. Once done click on Save.
10. Configure MCE 2005 to how you want it to appear and behave.
Hope this proves useful to people. If anyone spots anything missing I guess
it would be a good idea to add additonal posts to this thread.
