Build a MCE PC - help me fill in the blanks!

[dangel]

Oh god now i'm looking at samsung 40" LCD 1080P tellies - lustfully!

3 x HDMI/2 scart/component and 1:1 pixel mapping.. mmmm

[doddsy]

Oh god now i'm looking at samsung 40" LCD 1080P tellies - lustfully!

3 x HDMI/2 scart/component and 1:1 pixel mapping.. mmmm

Go for it, you know you want to!

[dangel]

LOL never the problem matey - it's missus who'll need persuading..

[doddsy]

You could always 'accidentally' break your current tv. Then you'd need a new one. And a lovely big 1080p TV is as future proof as you can get just now (sell it on the point that you shouldn't need to buy another one for a while. That is until you accidentaly break that in a few years to get another new TV)

[frazered]

chap,

I have something pretty similar recently built

HTPC:
MSI K8N Platinum NF4 s939
Athlon64 3000 Venice core
AMD X2 Heatpipe cooler
2x512mb OCZ EB CAS 2.5 @ 1T
Club3D X1600 Pro AVIVO pci-e
Nova-t 500 Dual TV Tuner
1x Samsung SP120 SATA2 200gb
NEC 5170 DL DVD+/-RW
Antec 380w Truepower
Old case with Nexus fans

Tv card - the nova-t 500 is a good card, but she is a little picky sometimes about signal strenght so I have to buy some signal boosters from argos.

Also the card has been designed to operate like a usb device, so when resuming from standby or hibernate you get the 'bing bong' of it initialising, if mce starts before that you get a 'no tv tuner installed message'

solution - use 'mce standby tool' to delay the start up of mce interface after resume

i am unsure of the card still as i don't really like the fact that it acts like a usb device and not a proper pci device - i.e. work as soon as she has power - you may want to look at the terratec dual tuners

gfx - i bought a £30 x1600 pro of the 'bay - undervolted the fan on it so it is near inaudiable - lots of people go passive but I was surprised to see that the htpc can run quite warm - my cpu idles at 37 degrees and 42 ish load when watching tv or movies

case - i too ideally wanted a nice case, have my eye on the silverstone lc17 silver - 74 squids last time i looked - however i have used an older case and put it behind the tv so far - got some modding to do with the airflow to improve temps

taking signal to the tv - i used s-video at first, it was pants, so i have bought a custom cable (£15) from avforums (or thegreenbutton) that takes vga to rgb - big difference in quality! you need 'powerstrip' to get it working properly with some customised setting but it is well worth it...

software - have tried vista with the above machine and it worked fine apart - just needed to root around a few sites to get the right drivers - hauppauge betas for the tv card were the most annoying - just install the drivers only and nothing else. have since moved back to mce2005 as it was more plug and play and drivers were dead easy to find...

there is some really good reading on avforums and thegreenbutton, also check out hauppauge if you get that card as setting her up can be a wee tricky

any questions?

[dangel]

Wow thanks for all that - very, very useful!

I've settled on a 7900GT [http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...ductID=565723] (passive) for the graphics - i'm hoping I can use the component in on my telly with it (it has a breakout box) which should be the best quality possible (I guess). It also has HDMI for future use.. That cable you mention sounds very interesting though - does it convert VGA to RGB SCART then?

Case - i've picked up a Akasa Zen Case (http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=446040) as it looks pretty nice, it's cheap and comes with 2 x 120mm fans which means it's cool and quiet. I'll probably upgrade to a HTPC style case in the future but i'm thinking i could literaly put the pc behind a flat screen LCD as i have a rather large AV stand for all my equipment and i'm not wall mounting the set. This is all for the future tho - the missus' reaction to getting a new tell for 1000 quid was 'thats too expensive'


Thanks very much for the MCE tips - the standby one in particular - i've no doubt a lot to learn about MCE yet I love a new project..

I now need to ring a bloke about getting an aerial put up - i haven't got one yet!

[frazered]

does it convert VGA to RGB SCART then?

yup

http://www.idiots.org.uk/vga_rgb_scart/

the link above specifies an ati card, but you can get/make one for nvidia cards too - there is a chap on thegreenbutton who makes and sells the nvidia ones