Now might be a good time to mention that I've been out of the pc game for so long that I was just planning on shoving vista on there and using media centre. I don't think I'm ready for Myth TV (yet). Using Vista, is there other software I need to consider? (Other than the BR playback)

I'm wondering would I use 4 cores? At *most* I'd be watching HiDef footage - either a ripped BR disc or playing a BR disc. At the same time I'd be recording something (maybe 2 things) on Freeview* or encoding.

If it was a dual core doing that would it be immediately obvious by stuttering the playback? I wonder does anyone know what the bare minimum requirement is for HD playback?

So lets ignore HD freeview for now and assume its SD for the next 4 years. If it was you, doing the above what would you recommend?


*HD Freeview is apparently planned for rollout in 2009. We have no OTA free HD content here (at least nothing that's commonly available). I see that the US shops sell HDTV cards - are they doing all their work in hardware? I want to future proof myself as much as I can although by the time its in common use (2012) I'll have a new machine anyway. Hmmm :S