Contemplating purchase of Windows Media "Extender"

I have a powerful PC that's been running Vista for 6 months. In that time
I've been dabbling with the "Media Center" application, having installed a
Hauppage WIN-TV card. I've been very impressed (both with Vista and Media
Center). In many ways Media Center would appear to be far superior to Sky+
for viewing and recording TV.

Of course watching TV on a PC in a family context is silly, as it's not in
the lounge.....and I have no intention of putting one there.

So I am contemplating investing on one of these Linksys devices:
http://tinyurl.com/3a48xa when they are launched in the UK in 3 weeks.
D-Link have announced a similar device (DSM-750) as have HP (x280N).

Is there anyone else in uk.tech.digital-tv land who is enthused by this new
technology?

+++++++++

ps. there are 2 major drawbacks of Media Center for watching TV at the
minute:

1. No support for "Red Button" stuff (text and interactive TV)
2. No support for DVB-S /satellite cards (and therefore HD)

I understand both of these will be addressed in a significant software
upgrade in Q2.

In article , Vortex [email protected]
m.vortex.fsnet.co.uk scribeth thus
I have a powerful PC that's been running Vista for 6 months. In that time
I've been dabbling with the "Media Center" application, having installed a
Hauppage WIN-TV card. I've been very impressed (both with Vista and Media
Center). In many ways Media Center would appear to be far superior to Sky+
for viewing and recording TV.

Well I'm glad I've found someone to say -something- good about Vista;!..


Of course watching TV on a PC in a family context is silly, as it's not in
the lounge.....and I have no intention of putting one there.

So I am contemplating investing on one of these Linksys devices:
http://tinyurl.com/3a48xa when they are launched in the UK in 3 weeks.
D-Link have announced a similar device (DSM-750) as have HP (x280N).

Is there anyone else in uk.tech.digital-tv land who is enthused by this new
technology?


Depends on how much wireless traffic there is around your gaff, and how
far away each device is from it etc;!..

+++++++++

ps. there are 2 major drawbacks of Media Center for watching TV at the
minute:

1. No support for "Red Button" stuff (text and interactive TV)
2. No support for DVB-S /satellite cards (and therefore HD)

I understand both of these will be addressed in a significant software
upgrade in Q2.








--
Tony Sayer

"tony sayer" wrote in message
...
In article , Vortex [email protected]
m.vortex.fsnet.co.uk scribeth thus
I have a powerful PC that's been running Vista for 6 months. In that time
I've been dabbling with the "Media Center" application, having installed a
Hauppage WIN-TV card. I've been very impressed (both with Vista and Media
Center). In many ways Media Center would appear to be far superior to
Sky+
for viewing and recording TV.

Well I'm glad I've found someone to say -something- good about Vista;!..

Massively superior to XP....but I realise I am in a minority in thinking
this.

Depends on how much wireless traffic there is around your gaff, and how
far away each device is from it etc;!..

I'll be using wired.

IMHO wireless does not seem to mustard", when it comes to basic stuff like
going through walls. Even the atest MIMO technology struggled to get 8
metres or so across my home. Complete bag o'****e.

"tony sayer" wrote in message
...
In article , Vortex [email protected]
m.vortex.fsnet.co.uk scribeth thus
I have a powerful PC that's been running Vista for 6 months. In that time
I've been dabbling with the "Media Center" application, having installed a
Hauppage WIN-TV card. I've been very impressed (both with Vista and Media
Center). In many ways Media Center would appear to be far superior to
Sky+
for viewing and recording TV.

Well I'm glad I've found someone to say -something- good about Vista;!..

2nd attempt at coherent reply:

Massively superior to XP....but I realise I am in a minority in thinking
this.

Depends on how much wireless traffic there is around your gaff, and how
far away each device is from it etc;!..

I'll be using wired.

IMHO wireless does not seem to "cut the mustard", when it comes to basic
stuff like
going through walls. Even the latest MIMO technology struggled to get 8
metres or so across my home. Complete bag o'****e.

In article , Vortex [email protected]
m.vortex.fsnet.co.uk scribeth thus

"tony sayer" wrote in message
...
In article , Vortex [email protected]
m.vortex.fsnet.co.uk scribeth thus
I have a powerful PC that's been running Vista for 6 months. In that time
I've been dabbling with the "Media Center" application, having installed a
Hauppage WIN-TV card. I've been very impressed (both with Vista and Media
Center). In many ways Media Center would appear to be far superior to
Sky+
for viewing and recording TV.

Well I'm glad I've found someone to say -something- good about Vista;!..

Massively superior to XP....but I realise I am in a minority in thinking
this.


Yes you are;!..

Depends on how much wireless traffic there is around your gaff, and how
far away each device is from it etc;!..

I'll be using wired.

IMHO wireless does not seem to mustard", when it comes to basic stuff like
going through walls. Even the atest MIMO technology struggled to get 8
metres or so across my home. Complete bag o'****e.

Well it can do some impressive things sometimes..

We've got a wi-fi link thats through putting 24 meg over 3 miles and all
legal...




--
Tony Sayer

....snip...
I'll be using wired.

IMHO wireless does not seem to "cut the mustard", when it comes to basic
stuff like
going through walls. Even the latest MIMO technology struggled to get 8
metres or so across my home. Complete bag o'****e.


Not using a Netgear router are you? There was a batch of their routers
which had poorly installed antenna. I looked at one which barely got a
conneciton across a room! It was replaced under warrantee and now the
entire old (and therefore solidly built) house gets fast WiFi.

Paul DS

In article , Vortex wrote:
Well I'm glad I've found someone to say -something- good about Vista;!..

Massively superior to XP....but I realise I am in a minority in thinking*
this.

I would be surprised if anything other than a minority could believe in the
"massive superiority" of a system that respond more slowly, crashes more
often, requires extra mouse clicks to do things, and renders some existing
software and peripheral hardware unusable.

Rod.

"Roderick Stewart" wrote in message
.. .
In article , Vortex wrote:
Well I'm glad I've found someone to say -something- good about
Vista;!..

Massively superior to XP....but I realise I am in a minority in thinking
this.

I would be surprised if anything other than a minority could believe in
the
"massive superiority" of a system that respond more slowly, crashes more
often, requires extra mouse clicks to do things, and renders some existing
software and peripheral hardware unusable.

Rod.

My feelings exactly!

Roderick Stewart wrote:
In article , Vortex wrote:
Well I'm glad I've found someone to say -something- good about Vista;!..
Massively superior to XP....but I realise I am in a minority in thinking
this.

I would be surprised if anything other than a minority could believe in the
"massive superiority" of a system that respond more slowly

Not in my experience - certainly not noticeably slower than XP was on
the same hardware.

, crashes more

Actually the opposite for the 2 XP machines I put Vista onto (one a 3
year old Dell laptop, the other a 3 year old home-built desktop
machine). Whilst crashes in XP were rare on the laptop - and occasional
on the desktop when removing USB devices - I've yet to have a single
Bluescreen in Vista, and the only crashes I've had (which actually
gracefully recovered without a reboot and worked fine afterwards) were
related to a very badly written, old Windows Explorer extension which
caused Explorer to crash regularly (and then restarted without an
issue). Once I removed that extension Vista has been perfectly stable.

often, requires extra mouse clicks to do things,

I find I use the mouse less now - particularly launching apps - just
press the Windows key and type the first couple of letter of the app
name. Much faster than finding the app in the programs list.

and renders some existing
software and peripheral hardware unusable.

2 pieces of hardware which didn't work. Old ATI TV tuner part of
graphics card (graphics part of the card is full Aero supported and
still works great in HL2 etc - even though it's a very old card
(launched 5 years ago), which I paid about £50 2nd hand 3 years ago).
The other thing was an old UMAX scanner, which only had NT drivers,
which sort of worked in XP but finally didn't work in Vista. Other than
that, all my hardware worked fine with Vista - even the 3 year old Dell
laptop had drivers for every device on it.

I've now had Vista on 3 machines (latest laptop came with it) and
nothing I've seen with it would make me go back to XP. In fact, every
time I use an XP machine, I get frustrated at how clunky and unintuitive
it feels now (I admit, it was okay when I was used to it). However, I
have used Vista from practically the day it went RTM, so over a year now.

But then I use it for my work (software developer), and at home, so on
it lots and therefore didn't take long to get used to the the changes in
how things work.

D

"Vortex" wrote in message
...
I have a powerful PC that's been running Vista for 6 months. In that time
I've been dabbling with the "Media Center" application, having installed a
Hauppage WIN-TV card. I've been very impressed (both with Vista and Media
Center). In many ways Media Center would appear to be far superior to
Sky+ for viewing and recording TV.

Of course watching TV on a PC in a family context is silly, as it's not in
the lounge.....and I have no intention of putting one there.

So I am contemplating investing on one of these Linksys devices:
http://tinyurl.com/3a48xa when they are launched in the UK in 3 weeks.
D-Link have announced a similar device (DSM-750) as have HP (x280N).

Is there anyone else in uk.tech.digital-tv land who is enthused by this
new technology?

+++++++++

ps. there are 2 major drawbacks of Media Center for watching TV at the
minute:

1. No support for "Red Button" stuff (text and interactive TV)
2. No support for DVB-S /satellite cards (and therefore HD)

I understand both of these will be addressed in a significant software
upgrade in Q2.

Have you thought of an XBox 360 rather than an extender?

I have used one for extending XP MC & am very happy with it, plus with the
latest update you can also stream Divx/XViD meaning I have less need to run
XBMC.

And you can apparently play games on it.