The Boy on Top
BOT - great review, and particularly pertinent to me. I am on the verge of upgrading to Sky+ HD. Will these new media PC's handle a HD signal in the same way a proprietary Sky box will?
Also, no mention of cost. For a PC that does everything you say, what should you be looking to pay? A sky+ HD box is £300 plus an extra £10 a month in subscription. I will hold off on the purchase and investigate a media PC instead...
Sky HD and Media PCs are untrod territory as yet. Interestingly Sky has decided to go an unencoded DVI route rather than HDMI for the signal (ie movies are recordable), so theoretically you should be able to put the signal into the PC first (assuming its got DVI input), and handle through the PC from there. There are rumours Sky is considering getting in bed with MS and offering a full media PC digibox, but the producers may complain about not being able to encode content (ie are terrified of average consumers being able to burn their own DVDs of broadcast quality).
As to cost, a baseline media PC can cost as little as 300, but the better ones start at 800 (check out Elonex) and can go into multiple thousands. If you want HD right away, just go with the Sky offering. If you can wait a bit for HD, get a good upgradeable Media PC and go terrestrial digital (make sure it has at least 2 tuners). TB
Cheers for the tip. Will procrastinate a little further and see how HD takes off during the world cup I think...
This is a great move forward by Microsoft--I'm just afraid all of the connection and hook-up terminology with scare people off...
Commenting by HaloScan
