Wolfweb its been quite a while since I've posted but I am looking for some thoughts regarding some church presentation hardware.

I attend a small rural church (<150 in service) church in Rockingham County.. north of Greensboro. We have a mediocre video presentation setup and after today's service I've decided that we need to upgrade our hardware asap. Currently we have a dell dimension desktop P4 w/ 256 ram (yes 256). It has a dual output video card and a single output video card. We have dual monitors, the left is only for the person running easy worship software and the right is cloned to the two projectors we have. The projectors run through a kramer presentation switcher/scaler. The video cards are both nvidia and ati not sure of the models but I don't want to keep 'em anyway.

Here's the main problems we have... 1st we only have 256 ram so you can imagine how that is. 2nd the projector at the front of the church distorts the colors majorly and I've been messing with the projector settings, the switcher settings, and the computer settings, and well the colors just suck.

We are looking for a new computer and since i've been out of the loop as far as putting computers together for some years, I just really want to buy a decent one with a good video card. Also I need to figure out why the projector up front displays so bad so I can fix it. If its just a new projector that won't be too bad.. it is a long run up there from where I sit.

What do y'all think?

10/10/2010 8:29:31 PM

What are your end goals? What function do you want your AV set up to serve?

What's your budget?

10/10/2010 8:38:43 PM

What are your end goals? What function do you want your AV set up to serve?

What's your budget?

10/10/2010 8:38:43 PM

I want to do pretty much what I have now...
2 projectors one near me running on the back wall and the other up front running the main screen
also i want a new computer w/ more ram that can run my easy worship software.. which mostly shows the songs in a slide format similar to ppt but can have video backgrounds and also I want to play videos .wmv and .mpgs with out having to worry about skipping... which it did today. Stereo audio only.

Also XP would be nice instead of 7 cause all the users are used to it.

10/10/2010 8:56:43 PM

well whole-e shit. an unknown rockingham county person appears. welcome to the club.

10/11/2010 8:15:30 AM

You can't get XP anymore. And you shouldn't get XP anymore anyway.

Any Dell desktop will do what you need and last you guys another 10 years of worshipping. just get a dell desktop, go over to newegg and get a 40-60 dollar dual output video card from amd or nvidia, and call it a day.

10/11/2010 8:44:33 AM

Quote :

"whole-e"

the fuck you can't type "holy" 'cause homeboy said "church"

[Edited on October 11, 2010 at 8:54 AM. Reason : quotation mark]

10/11/2010 8:54:41 AM

hahaha, twas a joke mang. sheesh.

holy shit holy shit holy shit

happy?

10/11/2010 8:56:00 AM

i won't be happy until i make somebody cry

10/11/2010 8:59:40 AM

ah. good luck with that.

10/11/2010 9:03:00 AM

don't mock FroshKiller...he kills A LOT of froshes

A LOT

10/11/2010 9:19:48 AM

Noen do you a spec recommendation for the desktop (processor, ram, video card etc.) I see they make numerous models too... vostro, optiplex, XPS, etc.

10/11/2010 1:45:12 PM

What church do you go to?

I'm from Rockingham County myself...grew up in the big ol' city of Reidsville.

10/11/2010 1:52:10 PM

Damn, another. Hello, fellow/former user from Rockingham County. I, too, am originally from Rockingham County. There are more here than I thought!

10/11/2010 1:53:06 PM

Rockingham County representin' up in Tech Talk

10/11/2010 1:54:29 PM

Sharon Baptist about 10 miles west of Reidsville on Iron Works Rd between the Monroeton and Bethany communities.

10/11/2010 2:02:18 PM

Right now I'm sitting at McMichael HS... I can't belive TWW isn't blocked on our school filter.

10/11/2010 2:03:56 PM

for my money i like the churchtron™ testifier 9000

10/11/2010 2:04:29 PM

Haha, I had a few buddies who's families went to Sharon Harris years ago. Not sure if they still go there or not.

Good luck getting this set up. I'd say that pretty much any newer computer is going to be more than enough for your needs

10/11/2010 2:06:59 PM

As for the computer and XP, just go to Partstock's website and put together a cheap ass refurbished computer there. We use them a lot at school and they work great. And they still supply XP. Will save you a bit of cash and it will still have a 3 year warranty. I'd spec out one of the GX620s, as you can do a dual core 2.8 with a gig of RAM for $319 and then toss in a video card from Newegg. They sell some cheap shit for office stuff.

Here's the site BTW:

http://www.partstock.com//

[Edited on October 11, 2010 at 2:18 PM. Reason : ]

10/11/2010 2:17:34 PM

I'll be shit...didn't expect to see this fucker back in here...

10/11/2010 4:54:41 PM

^^or you can get a brand new dell with Win7 and a Core2Duo or Core i3/i5 processor for ~400-500 bucks.

redneck: Either a Core2Duo or Core i3 or Core i5 processor.

I would get 4gb of memory.
I would get a non-integrated video card. You can tell on the specifications for the machine. All INTEL video cards are integrated. All of the nVidia/ATi/AMD video card options from Dell are standalone video cards.


Looking at Dell and HP right now, it looks like you're going to pay ~$650-699 for what you really need. There aren't any good deals right now. I'd wait until closer to thanksgiving, when you should be able to get the same desktop for ~400-450.

10/11/2010 6:44:54 PM

Send me an email from the PM - out nonprofit does tech for churches. All day every day. Projectors, sound, lights, network, etc. We'll hook you up.

As many have said so far I'd get an i series processor, but I'd go with Win7 Pro x64. We've been able to test some of the new MediaShout tools and the imminent change over to x64 brings a TON of fixes and speed enhancements. On the beta I could run HD video with filters and text overlay (with transitions) on the same machine that was choking with just the video in their x32 client.

If you go x64 obviously get more RAM. HD videos eat it like candy (we run our entire worship HD.) If you can afford it I'd go with at least RAID1 and if you have some cash RAID10 - there are few feelings worse than a dead drive on Sunday morning.

Of course you'll need discrete graphics cards. However my recommendation would be check your prices - lots of times newegg is cheaper than add-ons. If your machine packs the gear run 2 cards. We have a single-output card running the front projector; second runs the monitor at the machine and the stage feed (with just words - no background or video - makes it easy to read.) The front feed is then fed into front and side projectors and video over cat5 balun to 2 plasmas (nursing mothers room and kiosk out front) soon to also include our video recording room.

I'm also in town for the next few days. I might trade lunch to drive up and check out your projector and switcher setup (provided you're not WAY out in BFE.) Might be a simple fix.

10/11/2010 11:06:36 PM

you dont need raid.

10/12/2010 1:41:36 AM

Don't forget to to get a machine capable of running a full set of stage lighting, smoke machine, and haptic seat cushions... God is good, God is Great, but better in HD.
(All the new Churches have it)

10/12/2010 7:14:03 PM

I can't go to a non smell-o-vision equipped church anymore.

10/12/2010 8:43:34 PM

lol, whatever. I'm just paranoid I guess. Lost too much gear from weird happenings. I even carry a full image of our media PC in my bag on a spare drive just in case. Sadly I've had to pull it out at least once And our church is just a week over 2 years old.

10/12/2010 10:57:52 PM

you should buy the system on http://www.woot.com today.

10/13/2010 7:58:56 AM