Intel Atom Media Centre (again)

The Intel Atom Media Center seems to be working well with the Hauppauge Dual Tuner PCI card. It seems to have enough CPU to be able to record 2 channels while playing back a previously recorded programme. Indeed, looking at the performance of the machine shows that this is only using around 15% of the CPU. Overall, the unit is pretty quiet and uses only about 35-40W.

I am using a Linksys DMA-2200 Media Extender to stream TV (Freeview not HD) over WiFi to my TV. The Media Extender outputs 1080i format and is connected via HDMI to the TV. This essentially means that the extender is upscaling the image for display - the unit includes a DVD player as well as the Media Extender (this enables the playback of DVDs which cannot otherwise by played by the extender. The unit works reasonably well, but is a little short of horsepower - this shows up most of the animated Media Center user interface. You can customise the user interface not to use animation, if you want. This improves the responsiveness of the unit.

While this works technically, it isn't a great solution. It is far too expensive. The Linksys DMA-2200 retails for around £200 which makes it more expensive than an Xbox-360 which also plays DVDs and works as a Media Extender (it plays games too and is £40 cheaper!). The only advantage that the DMA-2200 over the Xbox-360 is that it is quiet. Then once you add in the cost of the Media Center, it all gets a bit ridiculous.

Since the Media Center is on all the time (to "hoover up" those TV programmes), I have decided to use it as a Print Server too. It would be really neat to see the Media Center capability built into Windows Home Server (you know the one that provides backup, file serving and remote access. This would mean taking all of the "Services" that should be running all of the time and combining them to run on a single (highly efficient) hardware platform.