HTPC pc?

Glaucus

Glaucus

Glaucus

Man of Honour
Joined
11 Mar 2004
Posts
76,678
I have some old parts. Is it possible to turn it into a htpc.

I have a gigabyte mobo, with an amd Barton think it's a 2500+ with an ide hdd and 1Gb DDR400 ram.

I would need a new case and a graphics card.
Which graphics card would I need. Something cheap and to connect to a large lcd with hdmi.

would be streaming videos from my main pc and using vista home premium.

Does this sound possible with an old spec like this?
 
At the moment it's just straight copy dvd's to the hdd. But HD might be a future upgrade. Do you think such a low spec could handle vista and video play back. Or would I be better using xp, but then it doesn't have the nice dvd gallery vista has.
 
so a second hand 3650 should be ok then.
I'll have to see if the mobo could take a dual core as that would speed up vista.
and 2gb seems to be round £20 so that's a cheap upgrade.
 
I'm still undecided what to do.
ps3
or htpc.

Ps3 would be good as I could play some racing sims like grand turismo. but it would be unlikely I would use it for any other games.
Or get a htpc.
Since I started this thread. I have upgraded my main comp.
So I now have an asus mobo
amd x2 cant remember which speed,
2gb 400 ram

Then buy
Lian Li PC-C32B Aluminium HTPC Case Rackmount - Black (No PSU)(£109.24)
LG GGC-H20L Blu-Ray Reader & HD-DVD ROM Serial ATA Drive - Retail
(£65.54)
HIS ATI Radeon HD 4650 Heatpipe Silent 512MB DDR2 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI
(£59.79)
Samsung SpinPoint F1 320GB SATA-II 16MB Cache (£37.94)
Sub Total : £236.96
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DHL Select Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.99
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £35.54
Total : £272.50

Would that be good enough top play blu/hd dvd?

Means I could buy some hd-dvds for dirt cheap just for things to watch when I'm bored and use my lovefilm subscription for blu-ray.
 
how about 1080p?
and does it have hdmi..
it's a sky router sagem router, so not sure how this would preform. Could always drill another hole for a cable though, if needed. Nothing like polyfiller when you leave.
 
Last edited:
coupe69 said:
Not sure how that would perform wirelessly, fairly certain those routers are only 54Mbps, probably best to put a line in and get the polyfilla out if it's not too much hassle :D
Click to expand...

Already ran sky cables through walls :o, just glad I haven't had an inspection. they seem totally laid back.
 
i think it's a AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
but don't ati cards do most of the decoding anyway. it wont be from files just straight of the blu-ray disc.
 
Because I don't download stuff.

Store stuff on my main pc.

Trouble is ps3 doesn't have anything like media portal or vista media centre?
 
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