HTPC

  • Thread starter Thread starter Veritech
  • Start date Start date
V

Veritech

Couple of questions,
1) are there any HTPC news groups
2) any one got any "useful" ideas for the below spare parts

1ghz celeron 370pin(coppermine it think)
asus tuwe(matx, 3 pci, no agp, 810 chipset i think)
256 mb sdram pc 100(128 x2)
32x cd-rom

got a case already, looking to spend max of £50. Ideas so far are, media
centre pc, network server, and network media server(basically like a MC pc
but minus an display card aka one big hard drive)

Thanks
--
"Blu-Ray"
2600+Sempron (O/C @2.046Ghz)
512Mb DDR 400
9600 pro 128 (O/C @ 425/540)
Gigabyte 7VT600P-RZ mobo with 400mhz fsb
Raidmax cobra case with 420w psu
 
Couple of questions,
1) are there any HTPC news groups
2) any one got any "useful" ideas for the below spare parts

1ghz celeron 370pin(coppermine it think)
asus tuwe(matx, 3 pci, no agp, 810 chipset i think)
256 mb sdram pc 100(128 x2)
32x cd-rom

got a case already, looking to spend max of £50. Ideas so far are, media
centre pc, network server, and network media server(basically like a MC pc
but minus an display card aka one big hard drive)

Thanks
Click to expand...

Who knows --- maybe with a hardware encoding card like the Hauppauge
150 you could get away with a fairly old chip. I have it but still
havent tested it yet with my new PC which will finally be complete
when my 800XL comes Tuesday.

I did install it in my old 2nd PC a 1 gig Athlon which would be a good
test actually more in line with what you are thinking about doing. You
can download the trial versions for Beyond TV and SageTV and use them
fully for a limited time to try them out. I have links to both at
Anandtechs. Ive actually installed them on my 1 gig with the Hauppauge
150 which is probably the most popular TV tuner card nowadays but I
prefer Sage TVs interface but it keeps crashing so far.

Im going to test Beyond TV next.


Theres some websites with forums
Build Your Own PVR
http://www.byopvr.com/

http://www.byopvr.com/Sections+index-req-listarticles-secid-1.html

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,59088,00.html

AVS forum
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?s=4f3131aea6cffcad680aa873388524ac&forumid=11


http://www.anandtech.com/multimedia/showdoc.aspx?i=2133
http://www.anandtech.com/multimedia/showdoc.aspx?i=2234
 
Couple of questions,
1) are there any HTPC news groups
2) any one got any "useful" ideas for the below spare parts

1ghz celeron 370pin(coppermine it think)
asus tuwe(matx, 3 pci, no agp, 810 chipset i think)
256 mb sdram pc 100(128 x2)
32x cd-rom

got a case already, looking to spend max of £50. Ideas so far are, media
centre pc, network server, and network media server(basically like a MC pc
but minus an display card aka one big hard drive)

Thanks
Click to expand...

That's a pretty open-ended question...
max of £50 won't do anything useful though, for starters you
need a fairly large HDD, else what's the point of a separate
fileserver? HTPC could use an existing LAN for video
storage and retrieval but the 50 isn't even enough to
stretch for a hardware capture card and a low-end hard
drive. With a hardware encoder type of capture card the
Celery 1GHz is fast enough, yet with a software based
encoder it's marginal, can probably do moderate (640x480)
resolution MPEG2 but it'd be borderline, possibly inadequate
for MPEG4/Divx/WMV/etc.

The system is well suited for either light, general-purpose
use like office/email/web, or a file server (whether it be
media files or some other is rather irrelevant if this is
for a single or very limited number of users, such that it's
not an issue of needing more memory to cache entire files
and such, there wouldn't be large #s of requests to serve).
That's probably what I'd do with it, turn it into a file
server, no more involved than NAS functionality and maybe
even underclock the CPU, as a Celeron 1GHz on 66MHz FSB
(667MHz resulting speed) is cool enough running that it
might be cooled passively with the right airflow, even more
likely if undervolted to ~ 1.35-1.45V. Celery @ 667 is
certainly fast enough for 100Mbit lan for 2 or 3 users, the
amount of memory would be more significant up to a certain
point.

Need a few remote video cameras? Get some usb 'cams and set
up a streaming video server.

Then there's always the option of finding some needy person
and giving it to them or charging them almost nothing
 
Back
Top