Is it possible to record a show on a xp mediacenter named PC-2, but while it's still recording be able to watch it on PC-1? Right now once it completes recording on PC-2 it shows up on PC-1 but not until it's completed. I'm hoping to be able to watch it while it's still recording.

I think you just answered your own question :P.

But it's going to be a football game that's going to be recorded. I rather not wait the 4 hours to start watching it, I was hoping to watch it live... Reason I'm doing this is I don't have a coax connection at PC-1 so I can only record it on PC-2.

I know I could run to PC-2 and stop it after the first quarter, but that's a lot of running back and forth and I'm still watching it significantly delayed.

you can't do it natively in MCE

you could look into VLC

What's VLC?

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Well, I wish I could magically change how things work, too. I don't think MCE cares if there's a game on or not, it just doesn't work that way.

A Media Center Extender is able to do what you want.  You can be recording the show on the PC and watch it simultaneously.  You just cannot do that from another PC. 

Since you posted this in a MCE2005 forum, your options are:

Buy a used Linksys WMCE54AG on ebay for between $50 and $100 but it will only work with MCE2005, not Vista.  It also only supports SD, not HD.

-or-

Buy an Xbox360.  The cheapest model that you can find will work.  It is capable to display SD and HD and migrates to Vista in the future.

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1: Dimension 9200 - Vista Ult, 2.4GHz Q6600 Core2Quad, 4GB RAM, 160GB, 750GB, 500GB USB, Nvidia 8300GS, PVR-150, HDTV Wonder, Vbox 3560, X360, DMA2100

2: HP m376n - MCE 2005, 2.6 P4 w/HT, 1GB RAM, 250GB, 400GB USB HD, Nvidia 6200, Emuzed MAUI, X360

That's what I was thinking I'd have to end up doing. I was just hoping to stick with a full PC as I have most of the parts to build it laying around.Looks like I may have to look into the xbox a bit more.

Option 3 is switching to SageTV, which will do all of the above.

Is there a good comparison of SageTV vs MCE that I'd be able to review? It'd be hard for me to switch now but I'm always willing to look into alternative solutions for my HTPC.

Brent Evans put together an awesome overview. Check it out. It's not a direct comparison, though.

Seems pretty powerful... Looks like I'll have to put off that Vista purchase until I research SageTV some more. I'm only going to purchase Vista to upgrade my HTPC.

Has anyone ever migrated from MCE to SageTV? I currently have almost 200 tv recordings that I'd want to be able to migrate over. I also have a huge DVD collection (over 500 DVDs stored on a seperate DVD server PC) which is powered by the My Movies addon for MCE, would I be able to easily migrate that over to SageTV?

There is a nice guide to switching from MCE/VMC to SageTV that was started by several ex-Media Center guys:

Importing shows is fairly painless.
Setting up your DVD collection takes a little more work, but is certainly possible.  As of yet, there is no way to port your data from My Movies to SageTV, but you can accomplish the same basic thing in SageTV for DVD collections.

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Ok, so a few more questions... thanks for all of the info so far. With my movies collection, I would simply add the network shares to the watched folders list and it would then import every movie? I would then have to do a IMDB lookup on each movie to get all of the details? Is this correct? Does SageTV automatically monitor the share for new movies?

Right now I have 2 media center PCs which both record programs locally. I also have a WHS box which is my main storage system. The WHS box has the Recorded TV Manager program running which automatically copies files from my media center PCs to the WHS shares. Can the same process be setup with SageTV? I personally try and keep my MCE boxes clear of most recordings as they have fairly small HDs. I also have a couple of shares on my WHS for long and short term storage of recorded programs.

The more i read on how far SageTV has progressed, the more I'm leanding towards converting. Looks like I'll have to find some serious time to convert this winter.