Don't buy one. At least not a cheap one.
Me and my g/f were a little peeved at the mcpc crashing all the time and I really couldn't be arsed to fix it properly, so we got a Top-up tv pvr from Thompson. No series detection. Unresponsive. Crashed. Returned. Then we got a Sagem on for a little more with no Top up TV. Hurrah! The series detection works.... unless you use it on any Channel 4 or itv channels, then it crashes. Returned.
So then I decided to rebuild the mcpc, discovering that the offending article causing crashes was the 8600 fan-less we had. I guess it just overheated.
So I got Vista mce installed and working, then I remembered the other problem. The on board sound is a Realtek HD audio chip. There are no signed drivers for the motherboard for vista (Damn you asus!!!). So I installed the drivers from Realtek. Microsoft in thier infinite wisdom decided to uninstall the drivers every time it rebooted, leaving the crippled MS drivers which only support Digital out.....
which the freaking card doesn't even have.
So, one X-Fi (raped from my main PC which uses an Audigy 2 now: Ahh sweet 5.1 digital) later, all is working! I also finally got the S-Video output working on her shockingly sdtv. Finally a nice crisp readable picture!.
And just think: If I'd been bothered to spend more time on it in the first place, this never would have happened!
Other things recently: Sony dropped the ball. Badly.
Losing FF 13 to Microsoft is a major blow. Sony has basically lost all the exclusives that made the PS2 so popular. The Xbox is gaining more and more momentum over the PS3. The Ps3 is a fantastic device, let down by the fact it cost Sony so much.
Sony need to
- Bring back Backwards compatibility perhaps via a software solution
- Amalgamate the psn stores
- Fork out some bloody moolah and get those exclusives back. They need Square-Enix, Capcom and Konami to commit to the PS3 otherwise they are just gonna keep haemoraging support to the XBox
- Drop the damned price. The PS3 is too much more expensive than the XBox, even with the Blu-Ray drive
I'm amazed at the decisions made really as Sony made some really good choices last couple of times
The psx was successful because they got devs on board and made the hardware cheap.
The PS2 was successful because it wasn't the last device that gen, wasn't overpriced, had a dvd drive (for initial support), had momentum from the psx, and they got some console shifting exclusives (Devil May Cry, Grand Theft Auto, Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy)
The outlook is a little bleak. Come on Sony! Pull your damned finger out!
At some point I will be updating this site to using a cms rather than my custom botched together job using Server Side Includes
