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Internet TV: Media centres

Posted on 9 Mar 2007 at 12:32

If you want the ultimate internet TV experience - the ability to enjoy both TV-to-PC feeds and conventional broadcast signals from the comfort of your lounge - there's only one way to go: a media centre PC. You can watch and record programmes coming over Freeview, Sky or the internet, download movies and watch them from the same system, and even enjoy games, web and email from the sofa, all using the one box. Nor do you have to have an ugly, noisy brute of a system to do so. A well-designed media-centre PC can be as low profile, quiet and unassuming as a DVD player.

Until now, media-centre systems have struggled to break into the mainstream. Microsoft's decision to incorporate Windows Media Center into Vista (in both Home Premium and Ultimate editions), instead of branding it as a separate operating system, could give the media-centre PC a much-needed boost in the arm and bring the technology to a far wider audience.

As always, there are limitations to be considered. In the UK, media-centre systems are generally designed around Freeview and, while this is fine if you live in a strong signal area, it isn't so great if you live in a remote or rural area where Sky isn't so much a choice as a necessity.

Admittedly, there are workarounds. First, you can buy an analogue TV tuner card or a capture device with a composite video input. You take a composite video signal from your Sky box, using a scart adaptor if necessary, and connect this to the tuner card. You can then use Media Center in Windows XP MCE (Media Center Edition) or Vista to scan for services. If it picks up the Sky signal, you can then use an infrared dongle to allow Media Center to control the Sky box for viewing and recording purposes.

Yet, this is far from a panacea. The fact that the signal is being decompressed by the Sky box, then recompressed by the tuner card, means there's inevitable degradation of picture and audio quality, particularly as the composite signal isn't the highest-quality output. Second, with only one source available, you're unable to record one channel while watching another. You could buy a specialist satellite TV tuner or PVR card, but since this won't accept a Sky viewing card, this blocks access to normally free but encoded channels such as Channel 4, E4, More 4 and Five. Hardly ideal, and the sort of thing that understandably leads people to buy a Sky+ box and be done with it.

A PC, such as our A-Listed Asus Asteio D22 DAV, is a desirable, comprehensively featured system, but at £899 it's expensive compared to a Sky + or Freeview PVR. Buy a cheaper media-centre PC and you may have to deal with more noise, a lower specification that might not cope with future media applications, or one that might not be future-proofed (anything without the standard HDMI or DVI-D with HDCP outputs is a definite no-no).

However, while a Sky+ box might be a doddle to operate, it isn't as versatile as a PC running Windows Media Center, nor can it provide a space in which to store all your media - from photos, to music, to video - and download more from the web. A media-centre PC is also a great way to enjoy legal HD content as more and more comes online (we'll pretend that none of you out there are illegally downloading HD torrents of Lost).

And, if you really don't like the thought of a PC in your lounge, there's an alternative: pair a PC in the study with an Xbox 360 console under the TV. The 360 offers almost all of the features of a Windows MCE or Vista PC using a near-identical interface from a completely different room, and you can stream audio and video across a wired or wireless network. Admittedly, it makes a noise like a leaf blower with a game or DVD disc in the drive, but keep that drive empty and the racket mostly disappears. For HD media, you may have issues with data-transfer rates across the wireless network (although you can follow the advice on p129 to iron these out), but the Xbox 360 is certainly capable of outputting 720p and 1080i content without difficulty.