cheapest mini ITX HTPC possible

[MrT]

HI,

I am looking at building the cheapest HTPC possible for doing the following

Playing music
Viewing pictures
Recording/timeshifting digital (freeview) TV
Watching DVD's/divx/xvid movies with AC3 sound

All in SD, as i'm not going to be getting a HDTV for a while yet

it must be as quiet and good looking as possible but most importantly be cheap.

This is what i'm currently looking at

Hipermedia case
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=177654

VIA EPIA M10000 Nehemiah Mainboard
512Mb PC3200 (PC400) DDR Memory
80 GB Samsung SpinPoint hard drive
Sony CRX835E CD/R/RW/DVD 24x24x24x8 Slim Combo Drive
Hauppauge WinTV-Nova-t PCI Freeview Receiver in remote

I'm planning on using Linux and mythTV to keep software costs down and using the Hauppauge remote from the TV card

Does this look OK for what i want it to do?
If it is I dont really see why most HTPC's are £500+ and appear to be well over specced. I can build this system for £290, am i missing something?

Jamie

[pak000]

I hope you'll be saving your recordings elsewhere...you're rapidly going to fill up an 80GB drive otherwise

I also tend to convert my mpeg recordings to xvid...this configuration would take an age to do it. Although i don't know much about the via mainboard, i would guess that you may struggle to record and watch a different file simultaneously (this would include timeshifting)

[MrT]

Yeah, i know its not very big but i dont plan on keeping recordings for that long. Sky+ only has a 40Gb hard disk and that seems to do ok

[ctid]

I'm trying to do the same as you. I've gone with the following:

Already had:

Jetway mATX motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 1900+
256mb Radeon 9200 Atlantis w/TV Out
768mb PC133
Samsung DVD+-RW

Ordered/Ordering:

Aspire X-Qpack - http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=274609
Compro VideoMate DVB-T200 - http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=196756
200gb Seagate SATA - http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=345218

Granted, I already had most of the stuff from my old pc, but you can get all that stuff for not too much money nowadays.

[Funkstar]

unless you are specifically wanting the low power consumption or small form factor of an EPIA system, you are probably more cost effective going for an end of line, or even second hand, Althon based system.

Not sure of the costs, but you can also get P4 based MiniITX boards if the size is important to you.

[MrT]

unless you are specifically wanting the low power consumption or small form factor of an EPIA system, you are probably more cost effective going for an end of line, or even second hand, Althon based system.

Not sure of the costs, but you can also get P4 based MiniITX boards if the size is important to you.

Its really the small form factor and the noise i am most worried about. I know my wife wont except anything bigger than that hipermedia case in the living room and if its noisy it wont last 5 minutes.

A mini-itx pentium M would be the ideal solution but its way out of my price range

Anyone know how much louder a sempron 2800 would be compared to the epia? They seem really cheap, cheaper than the epia in fact

[Harib0]

Compro VideoMate DVB-T200 -

The compro softwear is really really bad! I have one of these cards and it near on impossible to get any freeview channels with it, even though we have a freeview box and get all the chanels fine, The card at first picked up nothign then i got 45 chanels now i'm luck to get 1-2 and each time i want to use it i had to search the chanels again - i gave up in the end and keep meaning to try some 3rd party software with it but haven't got round to it yet.

I'd advise spending a bit more on the TV card

[ctid]

The compro softwear is really really bad! I have one of these cards and it near on impossible to get any freeview channels with it, even though we have a freeview box and get all the chanels fine, The card at first picked up nothign then i got 45 chanels now i'm luck to get 1-2 and each time i want to use it i had to search the chanels again - i gave up in the end and keep meaning to try some 3rd party software with it but haven't got round to it yet.

I'd advise spending a bit more on the TV card

I've changed my mind about all the stuff I was gonna order since then . I ordered a 200gb WD SATA drive and a Silverstone Sugo. For the TV card, I'm looking at the Leadtek Winfast Dual Tuner Hybrid card that Scan stock. I'm not decided on whether I'll be using Windows MCE or MythTV yet.

[Harib0]

Nice little-ish case the sugo, i just built my first sff with a lian li PC402a it's all working but i haven't had time to really play with it yet, i think the sugo will be my next venture