My son has a Wii and a PS2 which we connect through his computer so he can use his lcd monitor & speakers for both computing and console gaming.
Until recently his configuration was XP with an ATI All-in-Wonder (AIW). We could not use either the ATI software or MC to display his console games because of the PVR delay introduced by the AIW. I ended up finding a little utilty called AMCap that displayed his console games without a delay. (As an aside and not relevant to this discussion, I will mention that TV quality using MC and the AIW was unaccepable).
This weekend I upgraded him to Vista Home Premium. I had to purchase a Hauppauge PVR-150 tv tuner because the AIW is not (and will not be) supported on Vista. Luckily the graphics card chunk of the AIW works well on Vista so I did not need to buy a new graphics card.
Now, how to connect his console game to the computer?
- The AMCap utility does not work in Vista.
- The Hauppage software is junk and did not work.
- Microsoft's Media Center does not support displaying a console game.
So I bought an Adaptec Gamebridge (which converts video to USB) and confirmed it worked well on XP for connecting his console without a delay - but I did not read the fine print on the Adaptec site and found out after several hours of fiddling that it does not work on Vista.
Tonight I installed JRiver MC and guess what?
- console games are displayed very well with no delay
- and tv quality is very good.
So in summary, console gaming on Vista is another useful application for MC.
Well done JRiver.