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#1
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Multimedia entertainment center PC
Has anyone here built one of these things yet? I'm
playing around with components trying to see what works, and what is iffy. I have a nice game box in the "computer room" at home, and it shows lots of promise, but it just doesn't have the "look" for a living room center. I have the following in my game box. 1. Hauppauge PCI WinTV for cable TV input. It works well, but I don't have a remote for it. 2. ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, but I have not tried sending the video to a standard TV yet. The card does have TV out. 3. AMD64 Athlon 3000+ with nVidia chipset mobo and 1 gig ddr400 Kingston. This thing is fast !! 4. Sony DVD and everything else dvdrwcombo .... and it plays dvds very well on the PC monitor ... AOC 19 inch flat screen crt 5. SATA 160 gig with USB 160 gig drives. 6. Creative surround sound speakers. How much of this belongs in a multimedia PC, and how much does not? Also, what am I missing here? I know we are heading into digital TV next year, and I'm trying to figure out what is needed to generate a high end adaptive multimedia system. My game box so-far is kicking the crap out of my present living room center .... consisting of Bose Speakers, Sony digital TV, and one of those lord-awful Sony DVD/ VCR combos from Kmart. Wife and I spend all our time in the computer room watching the PC, because the living room set is always goofed up. I just cannot program chinese technology with 2 remotes. johns |
#2
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Just a suggestion.Wouldn't the ATI 9800pro All-in-Wonder be a better choice
instead of two cards? You'll free up a pci slot and have all the sofware in one package. "johns" wrote in message ... Has anyone here built one of these things yet? I'm playing around with components trying to see what works, and what is iffy. I have a nice game box in the "computer room" at home, and it shows lots of promise, but it just doesn't have the "look" for a living room center. I have the following in my game box. 1. Hauppauge PCI WinTV for cable TV input. It works well, but I don't have a remote for it. 2. ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, but I have not tried sending the video to a standard TV yet. The card does have TV out. 3. AMD64 Athlon 3000+ with nVidia chipset mobo and 1 gig ddr400 Kingston. This thing is fast !! 4. Sony DVD and everything else dvdrwcombo .... and it plays dvds very well on the PC monitor ... AOC 19 inch flat screen crt 5. SATA 160 gig with USB 160 gig drives. 6. Creative surround sound speakers. How much of this belongs in a multimedia PC, and how much does not? Also, what am I missing here? I know we are heading into digital TV next year, and I'm trying to figure out what is needed to generate a high end adaptive multimedia system. My game box so-far is kicking the crap out of my present living room center ... consisting of Bose Speakers, Sony digital TV, and one of those lord-awful Sony DVD/ VCR combos from Kmart. Wife and I spend all our time in the computer room watching the PC, because the living room set is always goofed up. I just cannot program chinese technology with 2 remotes. johns |
#3
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I have a MythTV box, so that is all I have experience with.
Unfortunately, a lot of what you have will not work with Linux, if you want to go down that road. Otherwise you might want to get Windows Media Edition if you want to be able to interact seemlessly without a keyboard. If you wanted to go the MythTV route, you would have to replace your vid card for an nvidia and also get at least a Hauppauge PC250. I don't think the WinTV cards work until Linux (I may be wrong). The rest of your computer will work fine (in fact it is overkill). I really can't say enough about how great MythTV is, though. Brett catisonh.net |
#4
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Just a suggestion.Wouldn't the ATI 9800pro All-in-Wonder be a better choice instead of two cards? You'll free up a pci slot and have all the sofware in one package. I looked at that for a while. The AIW cards are expensive, and at the same time, the TV input is cheap, and the drivers are a nightmare. I have had no problems at all with the Hauppauge card, and then I get the full blown 9800 gaming card instead of an SE / TV combo that the AIWs seem to be. I even found out that Hauppauge tests for compatible video cards .. and the 9800 Pro is one, while ATI never seems to update their AIW TV drivers at all. Maybe that will change next year, and demand with force the AIW card to a new level of quality and performance. Right now, I'm a little overwhelmed by all the new technology. The most interesting one to me is the wireless box that can push my PC video down the hall to the Sony TV. I gather it is 2-way, and I can sit there with an optical mouse and keybd, and have a technology that actually works ... rather than Kmart Chinese. johns |
#5
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dawg wrote:
Just a suggestion.Wouldn't the ATI 9800pro All-in-Wonder be a better choice instead of two cards? You'll free up a pci slot and have all the sofware in one package. The price you pay for freeing up a PCI slot is a non-standard video chipset that locks you into ATI software. Plus, since you cannot simultaneously stream to and from the AGP port you can't do any pre/post video processing of what's viewed, even if the ATI software had the capability (which it doesn't). Using a separate capture card, with a BTx chipset, opens up a whole new world of available software (much of which is open source) and capabilities. For examples: http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/supportedcards.html "johns" wrote in message ... Has anyone here built one of these things yet? I'm playing around with components trying to see what works, and what is iffy. I have a nice game box in the "computer room" at home, and it shows lots of promise, but it just doesn't have the "look" for a living room center. I have the following in my game box. 1. Hauppauge PCI WinTV for cable TV input. It works well, but I don't have a remote for it. 2. ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, but I have not tried sending the video to a standard TV yet. The card does have TV out. 3. AMD64 Athlon 3000+ with nVidia chipset mobo and 1 gig ddr400 Kingston. This thing is fast !! 4. Sony DVD and everything else dvdrwcombo .... and it plays dvds very well on the PC monitor ... AOC 19 inch flat screen crt 5. SATA 160 gig with USB 160 gig drives. 6. Creative surround sound speakers. How much of this belongs in a multimedia PC, and how much does not? Also, what am I missing here? I know we are heading into digital TV next year, and I'm trying to figure out what is needed to generate a high end adaptive multimedia system. My game box so-far is kicking the crap out of my present living room center ... consisting of Bose Speakers, Sony digital TV, and one of those lord-awful Sony DVD/ VCR combos from Kmart. Wife and I spend all our time in the computer room watching the PC, because the living room set is always goofed up. I just cannot program chinese technology with 2 remotes. johns |
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