Win XP Home Edition w/ PVR 250 - do I need XP Media Center Edition???

[Rob]

I am trying to purchase a media center computer from Dell. Their only
media center offering is to have Windows MCE 2004 with an ATI All In
Wonder 9000 card. I have read quite a bit, enough to know that the
All In Wonder cards are not ideal. I was going to go with an ATI
Radeon 9800 Pro with a PVR-250 Capture card bought after-market. But
Dell won't sell me the WMCE 2004 OS without the All In Wonder card!

If so, am I better off going with just Windows XP 2004 and then having
the two-card set-up? I have been contemplating ordering their 8300
system (not the media center version) with the better Radeon 9800 Pro
and adding the PVR 250... only thing I would be missing there would be
that I would have XP Home Edition and not XP Media Center Edition.
I'm not really sure what I would be missing out on here once I added
the WinTV PVR-250 and it's software. Any insight into what I might be
missing out on?

Thanks for your assistance!!!
Rob

 

[jquiet]

For some more MCE info see:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/evaluation/tours/default.asp

What you would be missing is the best integrated PC PVR on the market. It
has a nice simple remote, nice GUI. More and more third party applications
coming out all the time. Home automation is in the works, VBox just
announced some high definition cards. Cheaper "set-top" boxes called media
center extenders are coming out soon so you can distribute all your media
throughtought the house. Portable Media Centers are also on their way.

It should be a big summer/Christmas for MCE. Does it have to be a Dell?
There are quite a few other MCE machines that don't rely on All-in-Wonder.