I also needed a dual tuner digital TV device for the half height chassis, and this proved difficult. None of the well known manufacturers have one. They do all seem to have USB devices though, so with that in mind I went about looking into them.
I decided to use the Terratec Cinergy USB XS Diversity as it offers not only great build quality, but clever design as well. It also has Vista BDA (Media Center) drivers available for both 32 and 64bit (one of few). I have also got the Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT which is a PCI-X dual tuner card in my other (upstairs) media center; this is the computer that feeds my PocketPC devices while I am on the move. Both of these cards will get the review they deserve shortly, as they are well worth a look.
You should also think about storage; Media Center does not decode the incoming TV stream nor do any encoding on it, and due to this all the recorded TV is in MPEG2 format, and can consume a good proportion of disk space. My PC has 3x250Gb Sata300 drives in a raid 5 configuration for the storage, and a single Sata 300 drive for the OS. This configuration is not cheap, but then again it is not massively expensive nowadays either. It also has the benefit of being redundant for the video storage, and easily restorable for the OS as that is just an install away.
Operating Systems
To enjoy Media Center in Vista you will either need the Home Premium or Ultimate versions, with a compatible TV card (any of the Terratec Cinergy Cards come recommended).
First thing to do is to get your machine built with either of the Vista editions I mentioned earlier. Now click on the start menu and type Media Center and launch the application.
After launching, the initial setup screen will be shown. Go through this set of screens one by one and setup Media Center for your particular computer and configuration.
During setup Media Center will ask you details of where you live so it can setup the guide for your location and channel lineup, it will then scan for the TV channels that you can receive in your area and map the channels found to the correct channel names on the guide.
After all the setup is done, that's about it. I would recommend investing in a decent Media Center remote control as the ones that come with the Terratec cards are OK, but not really Media Center remotes.
![Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium UPGRADE [DVD] [OLD VERSION]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41mlAqlTCyL._SL120_.jpg)
Article comments
1 - Ash
im running the vista rtm release of media center and tempted to get a tv card but heard microsoft has stopped this functionality. is this just in the test version of vista or all versions?
2 - Ashleigh
Vista MCE only exists in certain releases of the priduct. however TV coverage has been in all versions of media center ever released, and it will not be removed at any point soon.
Have a look in the sci-tech section as I have reviewed two such TV cards recently.
thanks
Ashleigh
3 - Simon
Hey Ashleigh, I found your review whilst looking for a USB DVB-T dual tuner that would work with my Mac Mini running MCE (using Bootcamp). I wanted to hedge my bets by finding a model that would support both OSX and MCE and it looks like the Cinergy DT USB XS Diversity may be the ticket.
Are you still happy with MCE and your Diversity? I really want a solution that replaces my ailing Freeview HD recorder (Digifusion) but I want to make sure it's girlfriend proof! I'm not saying she's stupid :), we're just lazy and need something thats completely usable from the sofa.
4 - Ashleigh
The Cinnergy is still working great, in fact it's my primary reciever.
Vista MCE is certainly better than 2005MCE used to be, how do I know? The wife disliked 2005, and loves Vista, go figure?
The only thing to 'worry' about using the Mac Mini is it's lack of memory (get a ready boostable memory stick) and it's lack of HDD space. But it's a grat form factor for an MCE PC.
5 - Rick
Can I have more than one "frontend" with the media center in vista? Reason being I want to record the shows in one room and be able to watch other things in the other rooms of my house as well. I'm currently using MythTV with 1 backend and 2 frontends.
6 - Marcos Scriven
Hi
I have Vista Home Premium, and the same USB TV tuner, however, I see two devices, both of the same name. I think it's the sound capture part of the device that isn'T working (got that little exclamation mark)
Anyway, I tried downloading the latest drivers from the Terratec website, and it say there is a Hotfix you need from Microsoft, but rather stupidly, not which one!
Any ideas pls?
7 - Ashleigh
Frontends can be any media extender (like a 360).
Strange about the exclamation? I never had any issues.
Try re-installing the drivers for the exclamation part. To do this
Launch Device Manager
Double Click the errored device
Click Reinstall drivers
Click Browse for device drivers
Locate the downloaded drivers using the browser
If you get a pop up about security select the ignore/allow option
click through
That should do it.....
Ashleigh
8 - rock
hey guys..... i need some help.... i m currently using vista..... but i prefer xp media center to vista.... now da problem is i m not able to install xp mediacenter..... even after i format da os drive... i m not able to install xp media center... it does not auto run.... can any1 pls help me out....
9 - ParaDoXaLL
hey rock delete your partition whit fdisk and rebuild a new one just format is not enough.
10 - PaulH
Hi. I to have built my self a media center using windows Vista home premium. I'm having major problems with it though, I can't get any of my AVI files to be recognised and run on it. I've tried to look online for solutions and installed all the recomended codec packs, and still nothing. Is it something to do with it being 64 bit Vista? I have another pc running 32 bit Vista and that has no problems at all. Please give me an idea on what to do.
Thank you.
11 - . ..ke
Media center whats junc. I tried to use this what Ms say is advantage hi end solution. I think it's a junk like all vista crap
12 - Jonas
Regarding using Vista MCE as a frontend. I think this is an interesting topic.
It seems like this is "work in progress". There is two solotions in vista. Media Center extenders and media library sharing in WMP. The problem is that Vista MCE cannot consume shared media library. Neither can MCE be an extender for another MCE.
Of course it is possible to use folder sharing, but thats no fun.
Conclusion: There is no real frontend/backend solution in present version. Correct?
13 - Rich
Incorrect.
14 - MCE fan
For XP users please check this out: It's a great Vista or Windows 7 skin for XP MCE 2005 (Make Media Center in XP look like the one in Vista/Windows 7)!