Videocard MCE?

[Paul]

Hi,

I am building a Media Center and want to know what currently the best
videocard is.
The videocard needs to have a coaxial or optical out for sound.
I live in the Netherlands, so it has to support PAL.

Who can advise me on this one?

Thanks,
Paul

 

[J. Clarke]

Hi,

I am building a Media Center and want to know what currently the best
videocard is.
The videocard needs to have a coaxial or optical out for sound.
I live in the Netherlands, so it has to support PAL.

Who can advise me on this one?

Just about any video board will work for MCE. Your problem is not the video
board, it is the tuner board--no video board of which I am aware has the
hardware-based encoder that MCE requires. The Hauppauge PVR series works
well and most or all of them are available with PAL tuners.

You will in general not get audio output either from the tuner or from the
video board--that is a function of your sound board--the audio gets
extracted digitally over the PCI bus just like the video does. At one time
there were separate audio cables coming out of tuner boards that one
connected to the sound board, but those are rare these days.