OK, I was looking at a pile of pieces of PC junk and thinking "a HTPC would be nice". Thus I'm looking to knock something together with the minimum of cost with the aims of:
Specific questions are:
- playing DVDs and acting as a DVD jukebox (hard disk size limited). With upscaling so I can ignore Blu-Ray/HD-DVD until someone cracks the protection.
- acting as an MP3 library, etc.
- acting as a DVR for broadcast TV (no Freeview thanks to a ******* broadcast 'notch')
- allowing archive burning of TV onto DVDs
- displaying photos, etc.
- doing useful stuff like web browsing, file server/backup, weather monitor
- AthlonXP 2500+
- MSI Nforce 2 motherboard
- Bits of memory
- a Win-TV PVR 350 (don't ask)
- an ATL Radeon 9550 graphics card
- a DVD burner
- an old, quite large DVD player case
- a 400W PSU
Specific questions are:
- given the MB has built in audio, what is the best way of getting 5.1 sound into the AV amp. Do I need a new card? (my guess is yes)
- any problems expected with the ATI 9550 card and either connection to a video display projector, or use with something like FFDshow?
- how can I ensure that the thing goes into the maximum of sleep modes to reduce power consumption? If it is on all the time, I'd like it be both quiet and frugal.
- any way of getting DigiGuide EPG info into something that could be used for Tivo like functionality?
- any obvious bits I forgot?
- an ideas of other things it could do with it?