I'm thinking of getting a new PC with a TV card and use it as my main
TV. I plan to use the PC hard drive as a PVR, and the DVD drive as my
main DVD player.

How practical a plan is this? Are there any problems or downsides that
I need to know about?

In article <6e7a02d3-29c4-4ff4-9f19-0be8d55b9955@
79g2000hsk.googlegroups.com>, Daniel Titley says...
> I'm thinking of getting a new PC with a TV card and use it as my main
> TV. I plan to use the PC hard drive as a PVR, and the DVD drive as my
> main DVD player.
> 
> How practical a plan is this? Are there any problems or downsides that
> I need to know about?
> 
Only that the display won't look as good as a TV due to the low 
resolution of the broadcast image. Get yourself a twin tuner DVB-T card 
and stick Windows Media Center on.

-- 
Conor

I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't 
looking good either. - Scott Adams

<uk.comp.misc>
<Daniel Titley>

> I'm thinking of getting a new PC with a TV card and use it as my main
> TV. I plan to use the PC hard drive as a PVR, and the DVD drive as my
> main DVD player.
> 
> How practical a plan is this? Are there any problems or downsides that
> I need to know about?
> 

In the same way as one of those multifunction printer/scanner/fax 
machines ever breaks down then your whole office is broken & it will be 
the same for your new pc if it ever breaks down as your whole 
entertainment system will be broken.

-- 
www.sexconsentform.co.uk

Daniel Titley wrote:
> I'm thinking of getting a new PC with a TV card and use it as my main
> TV. I plan to use the PC hard drive as a PVR, and the DVD drive as my
> main DVD player.

Fan noise, slow power up, electricity consuption, does nothing to avoid 
paying for a TV license, gamma curve on PC monitor may be inferior to 
that on a PC screen, Aerial hit by lightning is very *fatal*, prone to 
system crashes being a PC, complicated to the girlfriend / wife ...

However, an incredible amount of flexibility especially if using a 
satellite/freeview capture card or BBC iPlayer. You'll be soon into 
wanting 100's of Hard Disk Gigabytes for storage, a blueray writter disc 
for backup, Multicore CPU's to dedicate one CPU for compression and 
recording, and another for playback. Run a network around the house with 
media extenders (or additional PCs) and you'll have on-demand 
programming for every roomm in the house.

I have a friend who has abandoned nearly all traditional methods for 
watching TV. Everything is based around Windows Vista using a satellite 
PCI card for programming.

(windows vista - yeah I know.... tears before bed...)

-- 
Adrian C

Adrian C wrote:
  gamma curve on PC monitor may be inferior to
> that on a PC screen, 

However, the above is really attributed to old CRT screens. The new 
fangled LCD screens that do a good job as _both_ a television and a PC 
screen - make the viewing experience far better.

IMO Go for it :-)

-- 
Adrian C