Windows Media Center PC Hell

I've always wanted to have a Media Center PC in my home. Mostly so I can watch the television programmes I want when I want to.
It was time to upgrade my PC anyway, so I made a shopping list:

• AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ CPU (dual core 64 bit)
• 1 Gb RAM
• ASUS A8V AGP motherboard. (VIA K8T800)
• SATA 200 Gb HD.
• Supermicro case with redundant cooling and hot-plug SATA trays.
• Hauppauge WINTV PVR 500 MCE.
• I used the nVidia AGP video card I had in my 'old' PC. FX5600 GPU.

First thing I needed to do (after assembly) was to flash the BIOS so the CPU was properly recognised. (dual core AMD is only supported as of version 1.14)

So far so good, installed XP Media Center edition, using the SATA drivers supplied with the motherboard. System booted, so far so good.

But then the problems started. Every time I tried to access the TV tuners on the hauppauge card, the infamous BSOD appeared. (Machine_Check_Exception) Many, many google searches later I stumbled on a forum from hauppauge were someone had the same problem. Turns out that, just my combination of VIA chipset, AGP and PVR 500 does not work. Doh!

Off to the shop again, this time to get a PVR 150 MCE edition. Swapped the PVR card, rebooted.... Finally! TV!

Well, almost. Watching live TV is fine. Recording TV is fine, but watching TV while recording... not so fine. Picture freezes after about half a minute.

I've been tinkering with settings, drivers, and everything else I can get hold of. At this moment in time, the Simpsons are blue. Go figure.

I think next week I'll re-install the entire system again.

Unless someone has the golden tip of course. ;-)