Considering a MCE SFF PC

[Skeeter]

Hi

I recently upgraded my PC so ive been left with an iDEQ 200n SFF case/PSU/mobo, AMD XP 2100+ and 1GB of DDR RAM thats just sitting around collecting dust. Im having troubvle getting rid of it, so im considering turning it into a MCE PC to use im my uni house next year as a DVD plater, Freeview box, and leather sofa bound internet browsing machine.

As you may guess, im a student, and therefore poor, so this is on as tight a budget as possible please.

first question, will the bits I have make a decent media PC?

second, what esle do i need and suggestions. Im assuming a TV card (Hauppage cards get good feedback on here), a graphics card with a TV out, a hard drive, a DVD drive, and they keybord and mouse and cables.

Any help is much appreciated.

Cheers

 

[tripitaka]

Hi there.

As you're doing this on a budget, I presume you don't plan on forking out for software.
Assuming you have version of Windows kicking around, MediaPortal will be well worth checking out - this is an open source HTPC application.

Alternatively, there are MythTv and Freevo, which both run on Linux.

Go for a freeview tuner card - recording from these just writes the MPEG2 stream straight to hard disc, so isn't very CPU intensive.

Obviously you want as good a hard drive as you can afford too.

I have a hauppauge card - a single freeview tuner Nova-t PCI. Worth considering dual tuners if you can stretch to that. They're probably the biggest brand, so support with third party software is more likely to be better.

If the machine isn't going to be used for any gaming, then you're probably best off getting a new, low end card. AFAIK the Nvidia 7300s or ATI x1300s should both have good TV out support, and could be had for £30-40.

Also, consider a wireless keyboard\mouse. These can be had pretty cheaply these days - you can even get keyboards with a laptop-style touchpad - great for using on the sofa.

Good luck!

 

[Skeeter]

wow! MediaPortal looks awsome! ive been looking for a way to make a normal XP have media player functionality for a while. How well does MediaPortal work with the Hauppauge cards? (does can you control everything from within MP, such as recording, sceduled recordings, radio, etc?). Also, how easy are these things to use? im planning on this just being a direct replacement to a DVD player and freeview box, so it will be a TV more than its a PC. how well do they work as these? (taking into account the first issue that they take a little while to load, a lot longer than just turning on a PC).

 

[tripitaka]

Well you should be able to control MediaPortal fully with the Hauppauge remote control.
Getting it to download TV listings automatically is a bit fiddly, but can be done (you have to schedule something called xmltv to grab them from the radiotimes website, I think...)
I've never used it in a dedicated 24-7 media PC, to be honest.

Might be worth playing about with standby modes rather than a full power down, to be honest I'm to sure how well these work.

Disabling any unnecessary hardware, and stripping out any unused windows components should help boot times a lot.
Be sure to stop any unnecessary services as well.

Also there is something called TuneXP, if I remember correctly, which can arrange all your boot files consecutively on the Hard Drive and defragment them. Seemed to improve boot times for me by a few seconds...

 

[Skeeter]

cheers.

about the graphics card, the iDEQ is AGP, not PCIe (Major reason for upgrade)