I have a dvico HDTV Fusion5 card and a hauppauge (sp?) 150 card. I also have beyondtv 4 already. I am looking at getting a new rig to dedicate solely to my tv. I would just move my tuner cards over. What do you think of this one:

Dell Dimension E521: AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 4200+
Memory: 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz- 2DIMMs
Monitor: No Monitor
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE Integrated Graphics GPU
Hard Drive: 250GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™
OS XP Media Center Edition 2005
CD ROM/DVD ROM: 16x DVD+/-RW Drive
Sound Cards: Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
Speakers: No speakers
Limited Warranty, Services and Support Options: 1Yr Ltd Warranty and At-Home Service
Upgrade to Windows Vista: Express Upgrade to Windows Vista Home Premium from XP Media Center Edition

$309 shipped

I wonder if the onboard video is enough to support the HD programs and not be choppy. Then I wonder if I will need to upgrade the video card and memory to play with windows vista when I upgrade. I know the new vista has a built in dvr program, but beyondtv4 will work great for now (except for hd content, I never played with it enough to get that to work).

1/14/2007 2:04:05 PM

The GeForce 6 series has HD decoding acceleration, so you'll be fine. HD streams are already MPEG-2 compressed, so it's not like you need to compress them further.

But is that PC really $309? That's impressive.

1/14/2007 3:23:37 PM

$309 from aafes

~$700 directly from dell

1/14/2007 4:07:27 PM

gotta love the bx

1/14/2007 4:43:19 PM

i'm assuming only military personnel can use this service?

1/14/2007 9:08:00 PM

or dependants

1/14/2007 9:20:12 PM

Set up a system using MythTV. I had purchased a mb with the same gforce 6150 video. The plan was to use the svid out on a hauppauge 350. When I finally gave up on MythTV and purchased beyondtv 4, I found that they will not support the 350's svideo out. So I had to buy another ($37) video card.

Long story short: Since I dont know the support level for the dvico card, make sure that you can really drive your tv as expected.


And have you tried myth?

1/15/2007 1:35:50 PM

with myth tv, don't you need to run linux?

1/15/2007 1:45:13 PM

I've been fucking around with Xlobby lately for my homebrew HTPC

I recommend it... great open source front-end for your multimedia apps

(now if only I could resolve that video out issue in my other thread)

let's keep this one going though, I'm interested in the HTPC stuff
anyone do any home automation?

1/15/2007 2:40:05 PM

Quote :

"with myth tv, don't you need to run linux?"

Yes.

MythTV is AWESOME. I built my first DVR with it just to see what it was like. I got hopelessly addicted and now I plan to build a newer one with more significant storage and resources.

1/15/2007 3:20:52 PM

snewf: I've played around with some X10 stuff. I know there are programs out there that let you control your lights and such with the computer and set up macros. I wish I could find a place to get more modules for a good price.

so what does MythTV have thats so great? Does it support QAM for HD? Anyone know how it compares to BeyondTV4? I am hoping I can find something not as processor intense (even thought my new PC, yup... I ordered it, should be able to handle it no problem).

Also, what kind of boxes are you guys using? I forget what they're called, but I know they have some really compact ones.

1/15/2007 6:31:39 PM

Quote :

"Sound Cards: Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio"

Check to see what outputs this has. Unless you're going to hook up speakers directly to the DVR/PC then you may want to look at a sound card that does digital coax or optical audio out (since you mentioned an HD tuner card and a lot of HD shows are in dolby 5.1.) That being said, most of the SB Audigy line do NOT output 5.1+ signlas over the optical output. I'm not sure if the new ones do, but I know my audigy platinum doesn't and that was the whole reason I got it.

If you don't care about getting 5.1 from your HDTV shows, then there really isn't anything bad I can say about that setup for that price.

[Edited on January 15, 2007 at 8:08 PM. Reason : ]

1/15/2007 8:06:34 PM

^gotcha, I'll keep that in mind. Thanks! I'm not sure yet about to sound setup. I am moving and I haven't picked up a sound system yet. I just picked up this computer as a DVR and I have my LCD tv.

1/15/2007 8:35:36 PM