MVP only option?

[JoeCollegeUL]

I'm moving at the end of the month and my PC will no longer be crammed next to my entertainment center. I love GB-PVR, but it looks like MVP is the only option other than building a secondary pc to leave in the living room.

MVP looks nice, but I cant play DVD over it (big deal 4 me), can't use all my plugins, and don't want to sacrifice composite cables and optical sound.

Is building a MC PC my only option, or are there other out if the box options other than MVP that will work with GB-PVR? (I'd rather use GB then other software packages that may come with other hardware such as D-Link medialounge)

[JoeCollegeUL]

Thanks for quick feedback. My TV is nothing spectacular, s-video/rca isn't that big a deal to go with. My big thing is my xbox is my dvd player, so all those burned copies of dvd's won't play unless there in my pc.

I guess my main question would be would I be better suited just throwing together an old box for about $200 and using it as dedicated media center, or if there is an alternative to mvp that could solve the dvd issue, but that will work with gb-pvr, or atleast not be noisy in the living room.

[nightwalker]

Since it sounds like you're not burning the disks to HDD and are playing off the disk anyway, why not use the MVP for everything but DVD playback. Put a DVD player at the TV. DVD players I've seen as low as $30 on sale. I use nothing but MVP's here and use carousel DVD players feeding into a modulator to hold and play back DVD's. The modulator is optional it just makes it nice to be able to see the DVD's on any TV in the house.

[ArfurAnt]

If you have an XBOX why not use the XBMC client to stream your recorded shows. You won't be able to use it for programming from the TV guide but as a media player and DVD player it takes some beating. I have replaced two of my MVPs with XBMC and they are even more stable than the MVPs.