[salam050684]

Hi y'all,

Im new to the forum and was hoping that someone might have some ideas on building a media centre pc for my dad's new Samsung LCD tv. Already have an external 320gb seagate hd to store all the Divx's that we wanted to connect up to the media centre pc. I don't particularly need it to look great - but need to keep the price down instead. Also I don't have much experiance with XP media centre so if anyone has any tips and knows if there is a cheap remote system to use with it instead of the mouse and keyboard. Also wanted to use the media centre PC to watch the streaming video on things like tv-links.co.uk and stage6. We also have sky so is there an way of connecting that to the media centre?
Any suggestions would be much appreciated
cheers
seenan

[hoot]

If yourself or anyone else is currently looking for a cheap media centre remote check out the cyberlink remote on ebuyer, its £5 at the moment which is far cheaper than the microsoft equivelant. Have been using it for a while now and whilst all the fuctions don't work in media player/centre most of the main functions work fine.

[Eltocliousus]

This might be a funny answer but it works like a dream.
Wireless USB xbox360 controller.

Plug the USB port into the computer, turn on the controller and use all the buttons to do different things.

http://xpadder.com/

Use that to map different buttons on the controller to different keys, i use left thumbstick on the 360 controller for the mouse,

A = Left click
B = right click
D-Pad = Scroll
etc.. etc..

Also if you need to type ( keyboard ) use a wireless keyboard or use the controller with the on-screen keyboard.

Start > All programs > Accessories > Accesibility > On-screen keyboard.

If you need more help with media centre just ask, im using one so i know quite a bit. Hope i helped.