Suggestions as to which softwear to use in this Media PC

Forget iMedian. You need to look into Media Browser:

http://www.mediabrowser.tv/

It's free and very customizable. It does movies, TV series, and music. It integrates right into Windows Media Center:



Here are some screen-caps of media browser on my system:





You'll also want to look into software to scap meta data for you. I personally like Media Center Master and meta<broswer/>.

Another good bit of software to customize your HTPC is Media Center Studio. Check it out.

For the remote, I would just use your harmony remote to control the whole thing.

Thank you very much...i will check these out for sure. So would you suggest i simply delete the imedian and Imon softwear?

Another big issue im having is getting the Hauppuge 1850 tv tuner set up with my dish network, here is the one i have..

http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hvr1850.htm...

Now the Dish Network is set up to where the main box is located downstairs in where the TV1 is located. then its set up so i can have two different tvs running off of it....TV1 and TV2..im trying to hookup TV2 which has two TVs running off of it. This is where i have the TV upstairs and a tv downstairs, i can watch whatever i want on TV2 but both the tv upstairs and the TV downstairs is considered TV2...TV1 is in the main room which is where the Box is located, with me so far?

Do im trying to get the TV2 upstairs hooked up through the Hauppauge TV tuner so id be able to run it through the PC and watch live TV, However iv had no luck with the tuner recognizing any channels...the TV has to be on channel 73 then i can control the dish network using the dish TV remote which controls TV2. So if anyone has any ideas on how i can accomplish this id really appreciate the info :-)

I will say this though, i just uninstalled wintv v7 1.1 so i can install wintv 7 v1.2 which will then allow me to install wintv 7 1.3...this was a hassel...the tuner came with version 1.1 but in order to install v1.3 i had to get v1.2 which was not a free download, then when i went to install version 1.2 i was told to completely remove wintv then install 1.2 which should allow me to upgrade to wintv v7 1.3. Then there are a bunch of other downloads and upgrades i might need like the MCE KIT and a few others which you can view on the following support page, But being rwpritchett suggested i use MediaBrowser instead maybe i do not need the MCEKit? I really did not expect to have this be such an issue? So again any help would really be great!
Thanks rwpritchett for taking your time to respond and share your knowledge and advice!

here is the page with the apps and drivers available, maybe you can help me figure out what i need to get this working?

http://www.hauppauge.com/site/support/support_hvr1800.h...