Re: Five out of the Six household machines updated with Leopard !

["rb_ziggy" <rb.lists@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

--- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, "Phil Harris" <phil@...> wrote:
>
> I did look at Media Central but it seems it doesn't support more
than one TV
> tuner - is that right?
>
> Phil
>

I'm not sure but I suspect you may be right.  However, I didn't get it
for TV purposes as I use Sky HD for that.  Two reasons, we get useless
analogue signals and pretty poor digital ones plus I like HD such as
it is at present.

Biggest drawback of course is that there is no way of integrating this
all into one user interface on either Mac or PC as far as I know and
looks like there never will be. Really p***** me off that.

So MediaCentral gives me ripped DVDs with 5.1 audio (bit flakey as you
seem to sometimes switch 5.1 on on the MC menu, doesn't seem to always
default to 5.1 and its not obvious when  it is/isnt on on the screen
menu!). Plus our own movies - which is quite neat as my son does his
own stuff and an alias to the network directory picks up the latest
stuff.  And. photos - again setting up directories with aliases
pointing to the originals works really well without having to
duplicate 5-6mb images all over the place.  With this setup we don't
have to rely on iTunes iPhoto etc - I find the Apple emphasis on their
tools and ignoring anything else really frustrating because the
household uses a mixed pc/mac environment. I really need everything to
work off of network directories not internal application directories!

Also, whilst I'm on a bitch, I spent all yesterday pm trying to get
the Mac to properly size without overscan onto a Pioneer 507XD.
Eventually got it nearly there but I still loose some LHS and some of
top menu.  Its not a problem now with MediaCentral, but using the
normal Mac interface is a bit annoying (although I don't really want
to do that as it risks residual images on the plasma).  I did a quick
look around yesterday and it seems Leopard doesnt fix this.  You would
have thought they could have introduced a variable overscan feature in
the latest release.  The 10.4 overscan off feature leaves a broad
black band around the image - almost gives a 42" image on a 50"
screen!

Richard