Mcpc

[Biscuit]

Hey all,

Im thinking of building a media centre PC for my lounge when i move out of halls next year. I have a spare 19" monitor that we can use to start off but hopefully will be moving to a 24" HD tft or something when we have saved up from splashing out on the computer.

Athlon AM2 3200 £45 off a mate
Case
Motherboard
Memory i chose this cuz its only £4 more than a 667 chip
Graphics Card
Dvd drive
Keyboard/mouse
TV Card
Hard Drive
Dont need anymore than that as it will be networked with our PCs
We may look at getting a sound card but i think to start off we will stick to onboard sound. If we did get one it would probs be the standard X-FI option.
This system will be mainly for music/films/tv and maybe some N64/megadrive/snes emulators.

Any thoughts?

[Funkstar]

any perticular reason for that card?

If you are going to be using Windows MCE you can only use the analogue OR the digital, not both. In that case there are cheaper cards for Digital TV.

like this one for instance:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=196756

EDIT: if you are going to be using Vista, check that drivers are available. Hauppauge have beta drivers for Vista available for most if not all their current cards i believe.

Also look at alternative media center applications. MediaPortal is one (http://www.team-mediaportal.com/)

[Biscuit]

actually that card would be better. the main reason was the s-video input so we can wire a console or something if needs be. Other than that does it look like a decent enough set up?
Il definately look into that media application, could maybe run dual boot incase i ever did want to run windows off it. Cheers

[Funkstar]

ah, you using linux then? fair enough

other than that, yeah looks fine

[DanceswithUnix]

I went for an Asus deluxe motherboard with the same chipset. Was another 10 quid or so, but got me gigabit ethernet (video files are *huge*) and s-video/DVI/component outputs for the onboard video. Might never use the video outputs but you never know.

I only allow Samsung hard drives in my living room these days. They are very quiet, cheap, and last I looked still have a warrenty that allows 24/7 operation (most drive manufacturers put a duty cycle in the small print).

I bottled on the Compro cards and went Hauppauge pci 909 which works lovely under MythTV.

[directhex]

compro cards choke on poor reception - http://cvs.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/2664

[Biscuit]

I went for an Asus deluxe motherboard with the same chipset. Was another 10 quid or so, but got me gigabit ethernet (video files are *huge*) and s-video/DVI/component outputs for the onboard video. Might never use the video outputs but you never know.

I only allow Samsung hard drives in my living room these days. They are very quiet, cheap, and last I looked still have a warrenty that allows 24/7 operation (most drive manufacturers put a duty cycle in the small print).

I bottled on the Compro cards and went Hauppauge pci 909 which works lovely under MythTV.

I will ony be using a 10/100 mb network switch so i dont think the giga network will matter too much. Good point with the hard drive iv had same experience glad u pointed it out
thanks for lettin me know to avoid that card, reception can be especially bad round here.

[DanceswithUnix]

I upgraded to gigabit specifically because I was recording programs on my workstation, and then playing them back via the server PC and had to copy them as I couldn't stream across the network with that setup.

The motherboard I got was this one. Thought it might avoid you having to buy a video card as well depending on what sort of video output you need. You also get more memory sockets and a Firewire interface (but it costs more).

[directhex]

the new living room pc: http://www.apple.com/uk/macmini/

hooked up to the server full o' disks & tv cards via gigabit