Replacing My Wife's DVR with an HTPC

I think I'm almost ready to ask my wife to switch from her cable company dvr to my Win 7 Media Center PC with a Hauppauge Cablecard 2650 tuner.

   If you look at my earlier posts you will see that I bought a low power HTPC system for this use but found it just wasn't powerful enough. I'm trying to build a system that doesn't delay, pause or skip as I want my wife to be happy with it.

  After replacing the low power system with a dual core Athlon II system I found that my wireless N network was also too slow so I purchased a Netgear powerline adapter kit.

  My system is now operating smoothly, no hiccups on the network and no hiccups caused by CPU performance issues.

  Through this entire process the Hauppauge 2650 has been flawless.

 One issue that I am still facing is that if I turn off the tv or change the source on the tv to something other than the computer while I have Media Center open I will find a black screen when I return to the computer source.  The answers I’ve found so far are 1) try to remember to shut down Media Center prior to turning off the tv or changing source and 2) if you get the black screen you can unplug and replug the hdmi cable or you can logoff or shutdown the computer and restart or log back in.  Anyone have any better ideas to fix this problem?

Powerline Adapter is working great

The Netgear XAVB5004 powerline adapter set that I installed last night is working quite well.  I copied a file to see how well it would work and saw speeds between 5.5 and 6MBs.  This is about 48Mbs, not anywhere near the 500Mbs the unit is rated at but plenty for streaming video.

I streamed several different videos, one a 1080p BluRay and the videos streamed flawlessly.

So far I am very pleased with this purchase.

Foxconn SFF not working out like I hoped

I'm having a couple of issues with this darling little computer, with one of my televisions I get video blinking. The screen blinks on and off every few seconds. Hard to work with it when it's doing that. With another television the screen is rock solid. I haven't figured out what is causing this issue yet, just reloaded the box from scratch and am going to have another go at it tonight.

The other issue I have is that the E-350 AMD APU processor doesn't seem to have enough power to run my Hauppauge 2650 CableCard and do all that I want. It gets slow and sometimes doesn't respond to remote input for quite a while. Part of this issue may be caused by my wireless network and the computer looking to my home server for some files over the wireless.

I replaced the SFF (Small Form Factor) computer with an AMD dual core Phenom II system. It's working out so far but does still snag on the wireless from time to time.

I've ordered a Netgear powerline 500Mbs system (XAVB5004 ~$130 + tax for the kit) to replace the wireless to this location. I received it today and will install it tonight. If it really helps speed stuff up I may try the SFF in that location again as that is my preferred machine for an always on DVR solution.

More updates soon.

Newegg has my new, $109 computer, on sale for 15% right now

Hurry and get one, I am loving it so far. Review to come soon.

Discount code is EMCNGNJ29, not sure how long it will be good for.  This should make the cost about $93 + tax if you are in California.  It still has free shipping.

SOLD OUT