Re: Pinnacle Show Centre...Advice

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> Hi All,
>
> As you may know I want to put a whole house audio / video system in
> by streaming all the media from a central server. The Pinnacle Show
> Centre seems to have a lot of features but will it actually work?

depends :)  kinda :)
What exactly do you want to do?
It will play dvd VOB files, but not give you the menus etc
If you play a 5.1 track, it will NOT currently dowmix to stereo
simultaneously - though you can switch between audio tracks.
If  you are playing music, you cannot browse your collection at the same
time.
It does not support folder browsing unless you use 3rd party software.
You cannot create playlists on it, only on the controlling PC.

It is, however, fairly easy to use - that and TiVo are about the only two
gadgets SWMBO will use without complaint (well,except when I am doing
something to hammer the PC the SC is talking to so the UI times out!)

They are making improvements to the UI all the time, though some of the
issues cannot/will not be overcome because the processor is too puny.

It's fine, IMO, for playing back ripped movies and whole albums of audio
and the occasional browse of photos, but it is not suited to random access
really - and if you've been spoiled by things like "play all
favourites
I've not listened to lately)" auto playlist in WMP then you will not
be
happy with using the SC for music playback.

>From what I've read on the forums, a lot of people have problems with
802.11b connections, and 802.11g may now never be supported except by
using a wireless bridge, which bumps up the cost somewhat.

The Sc *could* be a very good solution, its just that you pay find too
many limitiations to it in it's current guise....

> What about thinks like Sky TV and my TiVo?

Dunno about sky, but tivo too has a bit of a puny processor.  There was
talk about using it for mp3 playback on the forums some time ago but I
dunno if anything ever came of it.....

Note: the SC will now integrate with PCTV cards to give you tivo-like
abilities from your showcenter, but this code has only *just* been
released, and again, there are issues with it - and I doubt it is as
friendly as the TiVo UI either.

hth,

Tony