Ive read that MCE records TV in some new MS propriety format, does this mean that its pointless to buy a TV tuner with hardware MPEG encode?? Ive also read that the MS format can be converted to MPEG or another format but the quality is greatly reduced?? Has anyone any experience of this? Thanks

The format is proprietary but it is in no way complicated. DVR-MS is basically a regular MPEG2 file with a "wrapper" containing extra metadata. There are many programs out there that will strip the metadata leaving you with a straight MPEG2 file, all without transcoding the file.

None of the Media Center versions will work properly without a true hardware accelerated MPEG2 encoder. Well, a few will work but not without hacks and very high CPU usage while recording.

Thanks Raskren