Should I get the PMP or the PMC?

[Katie N]

I have a TV tuner card in my computer and record
TV shows and movies. They are mpeg 1 files.
Is it easy to convert them to use with the PMP
or should I wait for the PMC and let the media
player convert them for me. Does the media
converter software that comes with the PMP
work good? Is it easy to figure out. If anyone has
used this let me know. Thanks.

[Paladin27]

Is your computer a Windows Media Center computer or do you just have a TV Tuner in it... and if it's the latter, what format are your TV recordings in currently?

[SimonD]

Originally Posted by Paladin27

Is your computer a Windows Media Center computer or do you just have a TV Tuner in it... and if it's the latter, what format are your TV recordings in currently?

I would guess it's a normal pc with a TV Tuner card in it that converts the files to Mpeg1 format, but just a guess

If you want a player now I would go for the PMP as that's what's in the market NOW, if you want to limit your choice and be stuck with WMP10 media then go for the PMC.

I own an AV420 and the PiMP140, one has an integrated PVR ability (ie I can record directly onto it.. that's the AV420 btw) and one doesn't. Being as I never actually used the inbuilt recorder I don't have any problems with using the PiMP all of the time.

I think you need to ask yourself what one device has over the other that you can either live with, or can't live without.

I would say tho, that as you already have the ability to record tv to your PC you should stick with that and let the Media Converter do it's work, the converter isn't that bad, there are a lot of utils out there to do that conversion for you anyway... Media Converter 1.5 from iRiver, DrDivx, Pocket Divx Encoder and VirtualDub (should you want to experiment a little more). Go for the PMP140.

[Katie N]

I have an ATI all-in-wonder card and I use the ATI software
that came with it to record. I use the setting for Video CD
and the file info is: mpeg-1 352X240 NTSC 1.13 MBit/second
Audio-44.100 KHz 16 Bit Stereo. The reason I wanted to know if the conversion is easy is that a lot of the posts I have read about file conversions seem to indicate a lot of problems
with audio out of sync etc. Since I have never done any of
this I wanted it to be easy and work great. Thanks, Katie

[Katie N]

P. S. - I forgot to mention that I do not have a media
center PC. Just the ATI all-in-wonder tuner video card
on a PC running Win XP Pro.

[Astec]

Dont judge it on the ease of use alone, though it is easy to use anyway. Remember the DRM enforcement of microsoft on the PMC. The PMP also looks miles better than the PMC.

The Audio sync is rectified by the provided software. So no worries there.
The PMP also has a bigger feature set and more chance of 3rd party firmware.

[Paladin27]

Since you don't have a Media Center PC, I'd suggest the PMP as well. Frankly, the only advantage in my opinion of the PMC is the easy synching of files between media center and the PMC. If you already record in MPEG with your AIW, then I'd just compress them to DIVX using either the bundled PMP software or I actually just use PocketDivx.

The PMP is way more open, so you can put anything you like on the drive and not worry about DRM or other anti-consumer technologies.