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RE: Building a home theater PC on the cheap. Need advice.

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In Reply to: RE: Building a home theater PC on the cheap. Need advice. posted by soundnut on November 18, 2010 at 06:46:35

> Will this system be fast enough to do this stuff on a fairly reliable basis?
> I'm kinda cash-strapped at the moment, so I can't afford to spend a lot of dough on this project.

It's good enough for playing DVDs, but you're going to need a decent graphics card for HD. You need to provide more specs for the PC; is there a PCI Express x16 slot or is this PC that old that it has AGP?
If the disk drive(s) is/are IDE rather than SATA, then recording and watching (i.e. the "Tivo pause live TV experience) OTA won't be possible.

Do you have a fast enough connection to your ISP?

> Any recommendations on a good HDTV PCI DVR

Digital TV tuners just deliver a MPEG-2 Transport Stream of video, audio and control information to the PC. The "DVR" capability has to be performed by software.

Since you're starting out with WinXP, you need to look for an ATSC Tuner that includes BDA drivers. Most older tuners do have BDA drivers. The newer tuners have no PVR/DVR application software or BDA drivers, and you are expected to use Windows Media Center.

Regards

Follow Ups:

RE: Building a home theater PC on the cheap. Need advice. - soundnut 04:36:24 11/22/10 (1)
Hi.

Thanks for the info. The PC has 3 regular PCI slots & an AGP slot. I do have a good PCI dual monitor video card that I'm currently using on another PC through my TV with good results, so I can pop it in the HTPC.

Onboard drive headers are IDE. I suppose I could pop in a SATA PCI card.

At this point, I'm thinking maybe I should just go buy a new dual core mobo & CPU & upgrade the thing.

Cheers,
Bobbo :-)
- Use a WDTV Live to handle the playback? - bassbinotoko 02:11:55 12/04/10 (0)
  Use the PC for capturing and serving, but watch using a WDTV Live? This won't give you the PVR convenience, but if you mostly want it for time-shifting, it should work. This allows keeping the noisy computer in another room, and then you just need the tiny (and fanless) WDTV near the display. (Or instead of the WDTV Live, one of the various other 1080p media players: go to the Amazon listing for the WDTV Live and you'll find links to a slew of competitors.)
  
  Edits: 12/04/10

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