Kevin Tunis

In making the decision to buy a PC that could be used for showing video from the PC to the TV and also bringing the TV to the PC, the first choice was a XPS 420 taking full advantage of Windows Media Center. The goal is to be able to create 64 bit applications with Visual Studio 2008. The other objective is to purchase this with 4 GB of memory and later add 4 GB more. So this meant ordering it with Windows Vista 64bit an option that was not available on the XPS 420.

After a few tweet with @LionelatDell and emails with my sales rep mo_peterson@dell.com , it was decided that we order out the Precision T3400 with a compatible Nividia card that is similar to what the XPS 420 has. Again we were assured that we would have the same experience as we would with the XPS 420. Since we received the Precision t 3400 last week, we installed the audio tuning card sent separately, a TV Wonder HD 650 PCIe Combo TV Tuner. But we could not find a way go from the PC to the TV which should have been on the video card. Expecting supreme video, the card we have has one output and uses a cable splitter to go to the two monitors; this card is a NIVIDIA NVS 290 unlike the one that is on the XPS 420 which is a ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO 128MB. On this machine we are also running; a Logitech 9000 for streaming and Skype and Maxtor hard drives on USB this is creating a issue. When we install the Logitech 9000 cam, it knocks out the hard drives; if you unplug the drives, install the Logitech 9000 and plug in the hard drive, it knocks out the Logitech 9000.

We have Dell support coming out on Wednesday, June 18 2008 to take a look at this to see what can be done. We also notice that the power supply is 375W; shouldn’t this be higher running the two monitors plus TV and the hard drives? Your thoughts -suggestions or do you use Windows Media Center or something else to watch videos, internet TV from your PC on your TV. If so, let’s discuss it over on http://twitter.com/tunis or http://friendfeed.com/kevintunis