media centre for tv?!!?!?!?!?

j88kln

hi,

i am looking for a good media centre for my tv.

i have seen one that had a touchscreen remote that looked like a touchscreen tablet.

does anyone have any recommendations for one?

obviously the lower the price the better but i dont want to sacrifice the quality.

Thanks

Andy

geewhiz

Personally I use my PS3 as a wireless media centre to everything on the PC and Laptop and it's by far the best that I've used so far but if you don't have one just now then it's probably not your cheapest option!

Not used this myself but have seen it suggested before:

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=221816&C=Maplin&U=SearchTop&T=500gb%20media%20player&doy=13m4

Conor_3

I use a PC with a DVB-T tuner in so I can record freeview. Also stuck in a Blu-Ray drive as well.

geewhiz

Which blu-ray drive do you have and is it any good ?

j88kln

i have an xbox 360. is there anyway i can use an external hdd on it?

geewhiz

Yes, you have 2 options with the xbox, either use it to stream media from your pc or laptop using a wireless router (if you have the wireless option on the xbox) or if it's close enough you can plug it into the router and stream media that way.

It's also very easy to just plug an external hard drive into the usb port on the xbox, I believe the only requirement for doing this is that the drive needs to be formatted as Fat32.

j88kln

what is the difference between fat32 and ntfs?

TonyLisaP

ntfs has the options for security settings, that is the main difference.

j88kln

ok ill try reformatting my hdd to fat32 and see if it works.

thanks

j88kln

hi,

i am having problems doing this.

is there any free programs that will format a 300gb usb hdd in the fat32 format?

TonyLisaP

Try using windows disk management tools. You will probably have to remove the partition then recreate it. Goto start, settings, control panel, administrative tools, computer management and find the disk management addin. Select your disk and goto properties, tools and delete partition, then create a partition and then format it using fat32.
Be very careful you don't do the wrong disk and all your data off this disk is backed up.