is MCE nessesary

[delikatny]

I have a version of windows XP SP2 that I don't think is a Media Center edition at least I see no indication that it is.
I have an ATI AIW 9600+ video card but from reading these forums it seems that because of the lack of a hardware MPEG-2 encoder this card might be difficult to get working.

I don't have time or patience for that so I am considering using this card for video only and getting a PVR card like a WinTV-PVR-150. Will this work with GBPVR even if I don't have Windows Media Center Edition of XP?

I dont want any installation hassles.

Thanks

[delikatny]

Looking into this deeper I found that the PVR 500 and the PVR 150 cards seem to work with Windows XP SP2 as long as there are Media Center 2005 certified drivers installed for my graphics adapter. Maybe I will have to change my video card as well who knows.

[djphatjive]

Looking into this deeper I found that the PVR 500 and the PVR 150 cards seem to work with Windows XP SP2 as long as there are Media Center 2005 certified drivers installed for my graphics adapter. Maybe I will have to change my video card as well who knows.

As far as I know only hardware encoding graphic cards work. I have a pvr-150 an it has always worked really good.

[stustunz]

tuner cards hardware mpeg encoder card for analog is required

as far as a graphics card it needs to be able to to do directx9 your card (nvidia9600) is fine

just for your info a graphics card decodes not encodes so it would have a hardware decoder also referred to has hardware mpeg accleration