jbf154 wrote:Hi folks. I'm going to be in the process of moving in the next few months and I was going to take advantage of needing to repair my CableCARD with a new Comcast account and just do a hardware upgrade.
Currently, I have Windows 8.1 32-bit with 4 GB of RAM. Once I move, I'm going to have at least 1 XBox 360 extender (currently I don't have any extenders). I may expand that in the future to additional XBox 360 extenders, but for now just 1.
There are some tasks that I think I should undertake before adding the extender:
- Reinstall Windows 8 as 64-bit to give be access to more than 4 GB of memory. Do you think this is necessary? I'm concerned that 4 GB won't be enough with 1+ extenders.
- Upgrade my Hauppauge DCR-2650 (2 tuners) to something with 4 tuners. Any recommendations? Sometimes my DCR-2650 can't be found after resuming from standby & requires me to power cycle it a few times.
- Swap out 1 of the 2 mechanical HDDs for a SSD that the OS would be installed on. Recordings & live TV buffer would go to the mechanical drive.
- Is gigabit ethernet recommended with extenders, or is 100MB sufficient?
Now, I have my Window 8 Pro and MCE license keys. Can I reinstall with these hardware changes and not run into a licensing issue? Is there a way I can archive my current recordings that I don't want to lose (currently on the same drive as the OS)? Is there anything else I should be thinking of?
32 Bit is a preference, if your only using 4gb of memory, you can go any way. If your using a older machine, 32 bit will give a hair better performance in my testing over 64 bit and on a lower machine it could be the difference on some content. I do not know of ANY plugins made for WMC that REQUIRE a 64bit machine, so on that aspect, anyway and your safe.
I have dual booted with Windows 7 32 bit and 64 bit, and same with Windows 8.1 w/WMC 32 bit and 64 bit, in both cases on a CORE2 Quad with a GTX750, playing 4K content, I noticed on the 32 bit system (using the same version of drivers across the board for the video card), would be flawless video as 64 bit, was not perfectly smooth (the settings on the machines and builds for video were EXACT) and on higher bit would get a hair choppy that the 32bit did not show.
For the record, I ran a CORE2QUAD @ 3ghz, and 4gb of memory, running 2 extenders and running the main TV @ 2160p (4K) with Windows 7 x32 with -0- problems. WMC came out on WIndows 7 when dual cores were the norm(WMC in Win 8 is the Windows 7 version with no changes), so even a mid like PC would do fine but, the suggested for about 1gb memory for each extender is right in line where it should be.
Cablecard recordings will not play back if their DRM protected if you rebuild your computer. The quick way to test ? GO on another machine with WMC on it (Win 7 box, or 8.1 w/wmc) on your local network, Map a drive to your WMC machine and get to your recorded shows, try to open them, If your not DRM protected, the shows will play back fine, if they are protected, you will get a license error and they will fail to play.
As for your license moving to a new machine all depends on what type of license it was, If this was OEM (that came ON THE machine) as long as it's the same motherboard and CPU, your OK. If this was a retail copy, then it can be moved machine to machine, the only thing to worry about is OEM.
Quickest way to find out if it's OEM, is go here....
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-recovery
Put in your key, if it offers you to download the ISO, you have a retail key(MSDN, education, etc, but, can be moved), If it tells you to go to your manufacture of your PC, you have a OEM key...
