Also FYI, ATI has stopped manufacturing All-In-Wonder cards. There are still cards in the stores, but once they're gone, they're gone. IMO, you're better off with a separate video card & TV tuner card, rather than the "all-in-1" approach anyway. http://forevergeek.com/news/no_more...

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I am planning to use a panasonic 42 inch hdtv? I already have the cd and it is registered hence the end of story:) please somebody answere my initial queries.

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http://thegreenbutton.com/ http://www.pcalchemy.com/index.php/...

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As for what XPUser said.. You can now, as of Oct.? 2005, purchase a Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 CD at the same time as any hardware purchase that is acceptable and is on a list Microsoft has made publically available - e.g. a hard drive, a cpu, or a mboard that meets MCE minimum requirements, even a keyboard or a mouse. Some vendors bend that to include as little as a screw, but it is supposed to be something necessary to make the computer work - many hardware items don't count. The catch is, like for any OEM CD, you have to provide your own support - you get none of the extra free support you would get if you had bought a preassembled MCE system, from the system builder, or from Microsoft. ..... You don't need to get a Media Center remote unless you want to use one. It is not mandatory to have one. Media Center will work fine without one. Some video cards come with one, some don't, some don't but it can be added later as the support for it is there. You can get media center remotes on the web separately, or local places that custom build computers and have a variety of parts available often stock them. They will work with any video card or other component that is MCE comaptible. Most sound on newer mboards is already MCE compatible, or if not, you can often upgrade the drivers to make it so. "Does ATI all in wonder support hardware mpeg 2 encoding?" Yes. "Biggest expense in any such set-up is the screen - doesn't look too good on an old CRT TV. What sort of HDTV are you planning to use?" If he has a fairly recent crt monitor with a reasonably sharp display, it will probably look better than it would on any LCD display, and he should keep using it. It is not that big a problem these days because you can set the TV resolution a lot higher than you could in the past. He didn't say he wanted HDTV, a card with a HDTV tuner is probably out of his price range, and depending on where he lives and whether HDTV is available locally, a HDTV tuner card or capability is useless in areas that do not broadcast HDTV - e.g. in Canada in most areas HDTV is only available on cable. However, some cards, including some of the ATI chip based ones, can be connected to a HDTV ready TV, and if he can get a HDTV decoder box for his cable or HDTV is already on his cable, he can connect to a HDTV ready TV or display. As jam said ATI has or is shortly going to stop making All In Wonder cards, but on the other hand in the last year or so they have allowed clone card makers that use ATI chips to make cards similar to the ALL In Wonder cards, which they didn't allow previously, so as well as ATI brand ALL In Wonder cards that are still in stock, you can now, and will be able to in the near future, get equivalent clone card models that use the same ATI chips. I recently installed an ATI All In Wonder 9800 on a friends PC. If you do get an ATI chip based card, don't bother installing the drivers from the CD that comes with it if it is the same situation as I've seen - the drivers on the CD are for XP generally and there is no option to install MCE drivers - you must update the drivers using ones on the ATI website, and follow the proper procedure pointed to on the Drivers pages - you might as well not bother installing the ones on the CD in that case. If you do install the general XP drivers from the CD and then update them to MCE, be aware that the driver categories on ATI's Drivers page may be listed alphabetically but that is NOT the order in which you install them - see the install/update directions pointed to on the Drivers pages. ..... After you have installed the card and have set up the TV in Media Center, the apllication itself, check Microsoft Update for MCE related updates.

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Hey Tubes I haven't been posting much lately but I just wanted to compliment you on many of your responses. Your responses tend to be lengthy but that is due to the fact they are comprehensive. Good job. In regards to ATI installations, it cannot be over emphasized to follow the installation instructions precisely. Most issues with ATI cards are due to installation procedures.

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You can now, as of Oct.? 2005, purchase a Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 CD at the same time as any hardware purchase .. I know you can buy OEM Xp Home & OEM XP Pro but OEM MCE? Would you mind showing me the link with MS authorization? Thanks. i_XpUser

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Tubesandwires - You can ignore the question I asked in the above post. I did a little digging regarding the legality of OEM XP CD. I found what I need to know HERE. Poor M$ .. their push for genuine Windows software collides with certain legal doctrines. G'Day :-) i_XpUser

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Thanks OtheHill. I try to answer only questions about what I have had experience with or have researched, and I hate it when there isn't enough info in a thread for a newbie, but I do ramble on sometimes. As for the ATI All in Wonder 9800 I had some strange problems to t-shoot after the owner had updated to MCE drivers until I realized she had installed drivers in the wrong order, because the driver categories were listed alphabetically. The worst was it would not load the initial Desktop - after a while I found you could press Alt-Crtl-Del to pop up Task Manager, and run explorer.exe to get it to finish loading, and I found no way to cure that. Un-installing the drivers then installing them in the right order according to the ATI directions cured all the problems. By the way - in that case the original XP drivers on the CD require you connect an audio cable from the card dongle to line in on a sound card or onboard sound. The updated drivers do not require that connection. If you leave that cable connected after updating the drivers, once the TV has been set up in the ATI TV app. or the Media Center app., you will hear TV sound all the time (if you haven't set it up yet you will hear the sound you get when the tuner is on an unused channel), and when you start up either TV app you will hear two of the same sound, slightly displaced in time, like the sound is echoing - unplugging the cord to line in cures that problem. As for being able to buy a MCE CD set (there are two CDs) it is not available retail, so what else are you going to call it but OEM? When someone asked me a while ago whether I could get them a MCE CD (set), I did a lot of looking around on the web and most of the references said it was availble only on brand name system preassembled MCE systems, or to custom builders who wanted to make preassembled MCE systems, but then I found references to the fact that Microsoft had changed it's policy (Oct.? 2005) to allow anyone who made the proper hardware purchase to buy it at the same time. It's only available on the web, or from some local custom builders who have lots of parts and software available. In that case, I was upgrading her system anyway, so I bought it at the same time as a new mboard and cpu, but even buying a mouse qualifies.

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