I'd be better off buying a high end pc and a licence for snapstream, install it and it's working perfectly... Probably for less than a third of the cost...

I tried snapstream, and it worked for a day. I uninstalled/reinstalled it several time. It kept changing my location without me doing it. I would set it to utah and comcast, and go back to set up a recording, and what you know comcast and utah were no longer there. after several hours of messing with it. A friend had loaned me his version of snapstream, cause he had the same issues was gonna see if I could fix it for him.

I am looking forward to LMCE even though there are lots of problems. Open source I have found to be more reliable, and easier to fix and get working than some product I pay 90$ for.

Yes, I like the bluetooth Idea, or the other option is one mic in your media center room.

My understanding that as of now Ubuntu 7.04 will not work with linux mce, they are working on fixing that with the next release, I know there are work arounds. I am going to wait until there is a stable Linux MCE release for Ubuntu 7.04 before trying it out.

You could also try using the default NV drivers, and see how that goes, then after linux MCE is installed, install the nvidia drivers.

or you could do a manual install and get them off of nvidias site, that has worked occasionally for me.

I wont go to home automation until it is all voice recognition. Imagine this scenario: I come home from work, computer play track 3, in folder media, music selection enya. Then later when I have my food and beer, computer stop music, tv on, load movie blade 3.

No remotes, lets say I need to use the bathroom from eating dinner in the middle of the movie, computer pause movie, come back from using bathroom, computer lights off unpause movie.

No remotes needed. You would not need mics all over the room, or all over the house. One shotgun mic or a decent mic, in select rooms would be enuf, and if it is done right, most people would never even know the mics are there.

I would like to see included support for all media formats (xvid, avi, ogg, rm, all mpeg, mp3, lots of other i cant remember) and be able to convert them into what ever file format you wish for playback, and then burn them to DVD so that it will play in any home set top DVD player.

I used automatix2 to install my nvidia drivers. I found it to work better than the Envy scripts. just do a search in google for automatix as I am too lazy to post the link.

I have also installed the 64 bit version of Kubuntu feisty. speed difference will mainly be noticed when editing and converting video.

is there a 64 bit version of LinuxMCE? I have an AMD64, and installed 64 bit version of Kubuntu Feisty

That did help alot thanks. I am slowly switching away from windows, and all these new linux terms are slowly coming to me.

what is media director? is it similar to MythTV, or is more like a presentation software comparable to powerpoint? If it is like mythtv, which one is better? or does it depend on what you are doing?

You could also try using DSL, that stands for damn small linux. This can fit on a USB thumb drive, this was recommended to me when I was looking into a similar thing you are doing.

google.com/linux  i have used that to solve lots of my problems, and you could try the Ubuntu message forums. To my knowledge once you upgrade there is no going back. Only way that I am aware of is to wipe and reinstall. can some one please confirm this?

all the sensor bar does from what I have been told is for reporting the wii remote location. Which is why on the Wii, you set it to be below or above the TV. you can actually use candles as an IR, I saw the video on you tube or engadget. everything else is done by Bluetooth. The wii remote is nintendo's best controller yet, and the best controller on the market.

You can capture HDTV, but you would need to have a direct hookup, and the best for that is Hauppage TV cards. The previous poster is right if you want to use cable/Satellite.