Digital Home Thoughts: Simplifi Digital to Solve Input Switching Within Media Center

"Simplifi Digital is about to release a new line products called Expander Cards. These cards will hopefully solve the input switching issues that several Media Center users have! Input switching is the ability to hook up other devices to your Media Center PC such as an Xbox, Playstation, and/or VCR and then be able to view that source in realtime. Since Media Center requires a TV Tuner with a hardware MPEG-2 encoder, viewing a different source through that card is near impossible. Not only does the hardware MPEG-2 encoder make things difficult, but Media Center makes you setup your TV signal everything time you change sources, making it a pain to rerun the setup just to have things work right again. Well, Simplifi Digital's new Expander Cards will allow you to connect up to four devices and then view them in realtime. If you mix this ability with Simplifi Digital's Amplifiers you have a great setup all centered around your Media Center PC and not around a A/V Receiver!"



This has been one of the things that has kept me away from a Windows Media Center Edition PC, the fact that I still need to rely on an A/V receiver for switching. With this device, I can build one box that does it all. Now an MCE PC can switch inputs from legacy devices, decode and output multi-channel audio, upscale DVDs...just about everything I'd ever need. Thanks to 3rd party support like this, Windows MCE is rapidly approaching perfection.