Re post: Please finish my pc

[ramus]

Hi

Sorry newbie error posted this elsewhere by mistake


I know it a bit of a strange request but was looking for some help finishing my rig. At the moment it consists of :

2 x 80gig raptors
1gb geil ram,
A8N-VM CSM
AMD x2 3800+


What i want to do is to use it for playing films, start stop recording, record 1 watch another, (basicaly a sky plus box) I dont game tho it may arise.

Am assuming I will need a graph card, TV card etc. I have enough HD space as I have a couple of externals.

Running xp at the mo, have a vista dual boot. have MCE also some where.


Can i pick you brains please to finish this, its all in an antec case with loads of space

cheers

ramu$

[vrykyl]

what kind of budget do you have? and what kinda display are you going to use it on?

[danroyle]

are you building from scratch if so switch the board and cpu for a c2d e6300 and motherboard would get much better performance from it

if you dont really game but it may arise get a 7600gt they are going from about £60 up wards and would give you the option if you ever chose to game to play at a half decent res and graphics

[ramus]

Hi

the system is already together. My monitor is a 19" my TV is a sony kv-28fx75u i the cost of what i need is no matter as long as it does what is required.

ramu$

[ramus]

The bits I need i think are

the grafix card
TV card
sotware

I have a freeview box would it be more sensible to use software to record etc the tv progs i want by piping it back to my system ??

r$

[ramus]

Please ??

[chrestomanci]

I don't think you need high end RAM or hard drives. If you have not allready brought them, I would change the spec to more standard RAM. (Cosair/crucial/kingston etc), I would also replace those two Raptors for one huge 7200 Rpm unit. Something like this 500Gb Segate

Do you want to record from Sky or is digital terestrial OK?

If you are recording from terestrial, you need two or more DVB-T cards, and windows media centre to control them. You don't need any decrypting capablity as all the good stuff on freeview is in the clear.

If you are recording from Sky, almost everything is encypted. The normal soluiton is to keep your Sky box, and use an analoge TV capture card to record from it, but you can only record one channel at once.

I have read else where that it is possible to get a common interface module for Sky, that would allow you to put your Sky viewing card into your PC and make digital recordings, but I have heard it is expensive and I don't know how well it works.

[jamena]

as above, if you are planning to watch&record terrestrial (i.e. DVB-T) you'll want either two separate DVB-T tuner cards or a single card with two DVB-T tuners on it for just this purpose.

If you plan to use MCE then I'd check it's compatability lists to see what tv cards it confirms will work, just in case.

Most TV cards will give you an s-video input or similar which you could use to receive video from a dvd player or similar. Component input would be nicer of course but that seems to be a rare feature? You can get SCART--SVideo adapters to cope with cable/sky boxes.

Check how many other boxes (dvd/satellite/vcr/etc) you want to be able to record from to determine the number of inputs you want on the pc.

In terms of graphics output - try the onboard stuff first - the nvidia 6150 chipset is supposedly pretty good! If you do upgrade it I assume you're planning to go for SD only (or possibly with some SD-HD upscaling on the output?) in which case you do not need much in the way of extra graphics power, at least not 3d. I recently read an article on graphics cards tv/dvd processing outputs and ATis x1x00 range seemed to be the best option for progressive DVD output.

If your tv has HDMI input you could look for a card with HDMI-out, as they do exist. Otherwise you could try a DVI-HDMI cable and a separate audio cable. Check for the addon cards for your motherboard to get DVI out, HD-audio out, SPDIF out etc. http://www.trustedreviews.com/mother...Motherboard/p1

p.s. and as mentioned above you can lose the high end ram and hard drives - save those for your main pc? Plus you might want quieter hard drives!
p.p.s. oh, bit of an obvious one ... DVD drive? You can get some which will take video input and record straight to DVD from the TV card

[ramus]

Hi

ok the raptors etc need to stay as this is the main pc.

I have a panasonic sky box, sony free view box.

I want to :

Record stop start play with progs from both sky , analogu and freeview : which cards will i need for this would the nebula card do this ?

Record to DVD which player would i use to as u say record directly from the tv card ?

I have an s-video to scart lead high end

My tv is conected to a toshiba amp and marantz dvd player (this doesnt play written disks) so have loads of options

I have ps2 ans old xbox

xp vista or media centre.


Now you have my life story :0)


How / what do I do to to make this all happen together with best results, I will change anything i need to inc the s-video (read somewhere this is not so good) to get this to run the best it can. I dont have s-vid out on the system.


So its up to you i will be guided whatever you want

ramu$

[ramus]

If I was to put a nebula pci card in with a slave and a 7900gs graphics card would this be adiquate for my needs and keep me sort of future proof. Which dvd would i be right to choose ??

r$

[nvening]

Sky through MCE 2005 seems slightly complicated.

Have a look here http://www.salloway.org.uk/mediacenter/2005/

I think basically u have to connect your sky box to an analogue tv card and it will then work as normal.

To have a dual tuner setup (so you can watch one program and record another at the same time) u will need a dual analogue cards and two sky boxes.

Also i think that with a dual tuner setup both tuners have to recieve the same siginal eg both sky or both freeview as there is only one guide, unless this has been changed. (im a bit unsure on how the freeview/analogue cards work)

The sky part as you can see ima bit unsure however on the rest i can help.

Im guessing you have a case/ psu? If its going to be a media center PC then you could mabe consider a media center PC case such as this:
http://www.antec.com/uk/productDetails.php?ProdID=08739

As for the GPU do you need to play games? If not then the onboard GPU on your motherboard should be ok.

As for the software i would probably recomend MCE 2005 unless you want to go linux with something like SageTV:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=498853
That comes with a free voucher for vista so you can upgrade when it comes out.

[CrazyMonkey]

7900GS is a great card for the money and will go strong for some time, atleast untill DX10 is fully out and needed.