How all here also has a HTPC?

**spyhunter** · 10-31-2004, 04:36 PM

**tbird2340** · 11-01-2004, 03:18 PM

What does everyone use their's for? I'm thinking of using mine to possibly record TV shows and then play them back.

How good of a sound card do you need? Then do you just get a cable that plugs into your line output of your soundcard and then turns into RCA's to go to your TV?

**jcdillin** · 11-01-2004, 06:33 PM

I use mine for recording shows, playing MP3's, playing divx movies, checking the weather and getting movie showtimes for the theater. I use a Live 5.1 card in mine only because my receiver has a dolby digital input and I watch alot of divx movies that have 5.1 sound. But you could just use a regular sound card with a 1/8" to RCA adapter.

**tbird2340** · 11-01-2004, 06:35 PM

Do you have yours output to a TV?

**jcdillin** · 11-01-2004, 06:42 PM

Yeah, thats why I use the ATI AIW 9800 because it has video in and out. Some people say it sucks compared to some cards but i've been more than happy with it.

**tbird2340** · 11-01-2004, 07:34 PM

Hmm.. I was thinking about getting the Hauppauge PVR 350 because it's a little cheaper then the Ati AIW 9800.

Being that the video card does the encoding (the PVR 350 does anyways) I'm wondering if I can get away with using a PIII 900MHZ as the CPU.

Anybody have any thoughts on that??

**jcdillin** · 11-01-2004, 08:07 PM

That card only needs a 733 Mhz minimum so with a good bit of ram like 256 or 512 it will probably work just fine.

**sagekoala** · 11-02-2004, 02:49 AM

see my htpc stole all the money from my carputer so I'm in the opposite boat! my system is as follows.
antec overture
XP2600+ barton
asus A7N8X
512meg xms pro
geforce fx 5200
3x pvr-250
20g boot drive
2x 160gig seagate hardware stripped
500+gig of other random media mounted using samba
slot load dvd

i freaking love this machine. i really like the case ... it may not look quite as nice as those costing twice as much, but it maybe the best designed htpc case I've ran into yet.

what you want to use for machine specs really varies ... if you use the a pvr-350 or a pvr-250 you don't need as much power because they have hardware mpeg encoders on them. the pvr-350 has a hardware decoder ... which i don't like so i don't it. i really like nforce chipsets. memory just get whatever nice ram you would like. i use a separate boot drive because there is no redundancy in my raid array ... if it fails a miss a few episodes of snl ... no problem. seagate drives will get you three things quiet speed reliability. my other media is just on several windows file servers i have running for that purpose. i used a geforcefx 5200 because i didn't need anything special for output because i use a infocus X1 projector which has vga in (yay)

another nice thing about using a pvr250 or 350 is the ir. i went and bought a nice $30 rat shack remote with rf, learning, macros and a jp1 interface and use that instead of some ****ty little remote.

when i was first setting this system up it was a 950 slotA classic athlon with 1.5 gig ecc buffered ram ... i never did get smooth playback out of the thing. i assume this was because i run linux and the drivers for the pvr250 were the biggest pieces of **** at the time (but are much better now) there shouldn't be any reason why you couldn't get smooth playback out of a P3 900.

i always recomend mythtv (because I'm its *****) the only reason i would recomend windows is if you want to use fddshow (i use a athlon64 3200+ running XP for dvd playback with fddshow) somehow for playback or if your a pussy. i chose linux because this was a project designed to take up time and keep me busy (took me 4 weeks to get mythtv and ivtv (drivers) compiled from source) but with this it only take a few hours. or there is always knoppmyth which is a live cd you can boot off of.

there is all sorts of **** out there ... read it all

**e_z_street** · 11-02-2004, 08:20 AM

Originally Posted by sagekoala

see my htpc stole all the money from my carputer so I'm in the opposite boat! my system is as follows.

If you don't already, you need to read fatwallet hot deals forum

I have the radio shack jp1 remote ($15) and the x1 ($760) too. I still need to make the jp1 interface and update the firmware on the x1. I really like mythtv, but I am a total noob with linux, so I am planning on using a windows front end. For my HTPC, I am planning on using an Athlon with a barton core. I already have a 200Gb ($60 AR) and a 160 Gb ($50 AR) Seagate drive, but am using the 200 Gb with my Xbox. The thing that I need to save for is a nice graphics card for gaming and a pvr car. I also need better speakers and better seating. Right now I am using the leather managers chair that I got FAR

What kind of audio setup do you have? Are you using a screen? What kind of seats? Pics?

**tbird2340** · 11-02-2004, 08:23 AM

Originally Posted by sagekoala

what you want to use for machine specs really varies ...

I just want mine basically for MP3 playback and mostly for watching shows I downloaded on TV instead of burning VCD's and losing the quality. I won't be using it to watch DVD's because I have a home theater in my basement. What I'm wondering is if I should spend the money and get a PVR card or just do what I've always done and get the eps I want off the internet. I already have a video card with S-VIDEO out..

Originally Posted by sagekoala

if you use the a pvr-350 or a pvr-250 you don't need as much power because they have hardware mpeg encoders on them. the pvr-350 has a hardware decoder ... which i don't like so i don't it.

Why don't you like hardware decoding?

Thanks for the help!