Media Centre PC Spec Please

Bloodshot · 27 Aug 2006 at 18:02

Hi Guys,

I'm interested in building a media center PC, and was wondering if you guys could give me some help in picking the right components. I've got a spec which I made up - but it's slightly over budget (£700).

Could you guys help me remove / downgrade some stuff to get to that price?

I need to be able to watch and record TV at the same time - but it won't be used for gaming.

Thanks,

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Media Center PC Price:

Silverstone Lascala SST-LC03 HTPC Case (Black) (CA-025-SV) £82.19
AMD Athlon 64 3000 Retail / Asus A8N-SLi SE / 2GB Geil PC3200 Dual Channel Kit - Bundle (BU-031-OK): £260.81
Pioneer DVR-111BK 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter - (Black) OEM (CD-041-PO): £26.97
BFG GeForce 7300 GT OC 256MB DDR2 HDTV/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-032-BG): £55.21
Hauppauge WinTV PVR-500 Media Centre Edition Dual TV Tuner (GX-028-HA): £111.57
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB ST3320620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-078-SE) £70.44
Tagan TG480-U01 480W ATX2.0 SLi Compliant Silent PSU (CA-000-TG): £51.99
Microsoft Windows XP Media Centre 2005 Edition - OEM - 1Pk (M93-00200) (SW-008-MS): £77.54
Microsoft Windows XP Media Centre 2005 Remote Controller (SW-009-MS): £23.49
Microsoft Remote Keyboard for Windows XP Media Center Edition - OEM (KB-053-MS): £58.74

Total: £820 (inc VAT).

cavemanoc · 27 Aug 2006 at 18:52

Microsoft Windows XP Media Centre 2005 Remote Controller (SW-009-MS): £23.49

The Hauppage comes with a Media Centre certified remote and transmitter so you shouldn't need this

Bloodshot · 28 Aug 2006 at 01:40

Ah awesome, thanks.

Anything else I can either downgrade / remove that won't make that much of a difference?

squiffy · 28 Aug 2006 at 08:03

1GB will be fine
You might want to swop that GFX card for a passive type.
Pioneer drives aren't quiet
That motherboard has a chipset fan (loud)

Do you need a full size ATX board/expansion slots? You could build a MATX up, they have two PCI and one PCI-E, enough for most (ie soundcard, DVB TV tuner, upgraded graphics card) Couple have passive IGP which is fine for HD.

Bloodshot · 28 Aug 2006 at 14:20

Hi Squiffy,

Based on your ideas below, do you think you could do me a spec please? The MATX setup sounds like a good idea.

Cheers!

squiffy · 28 Aug 2006 at 14:36

CP-164-AM AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 2.2GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail (CP-164-AM)
£54.95 £54.95
MB-145-AS Asus M2NPV-VM Micro ATX (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-145-AS)
£49.99 £49.99
MY-083-CS Corsair 1GB DDR2 Value Select PC5300 Dual Channel Kit (2x512MB) (VS1GBKIT667D2) (MY-083-CS)
£59.95 £59.95
CA-053-AN Antec NSK2400 Desktop Case - 380W SmartPower PSU (CA-053-AN)
£49.95 £49.95
HD-046-WD Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB 2500KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-046-WD)
£44.95 £44.95
SW-009-MS Microsoft Windows XP Media Centre 2005 Remote Controller (SW-009-MS)
£19.99 £19.99
Subtotal £279.78
VAT £48.97
Total £328.75

Just add optical drive (I believe Samsung and LG are quiet?) perhaps replace stock HSF (can do that later though) and TV card. If the TV card controls rest of MC functions you don't need the MS remote.

kevpuk · 28 Aug 2006 at 14:38

MSI K8NGM2-FID is a cracking board for MCE....integrated GeForce 6150 (not the weedier 6100 on some of its competitors

) with DVI, VGA, S-Video and Component output !! (Dunno if there is an AM2 equivalent....?????)

2x512MB is fine for RAM, although may be worth considering a slightly better CPU....I had a 3000+ initially and changed to a 3700+ with all the recent price drops

and there is a noticeable improvement in all things video related.....

Are you only looking at analogue TV cards ?? I would recommend the Terratec 2400i DT as a great inhabitant of the PCI-e x1 slot on said mobo

Bloodshot · 28 Aug 2006 at 14:51

kevpuk said:
MSI K8NGM2-FID is a cracking board for MCE....integrated GeForce 6150 (not the weedier 6100 on some of its competitors ) with DVI, VGA, S-Video and Component output !! (Dunno if there is an AM2 equivalent....?????)

2x512MB is fine for RAM, although may be worth considering a slightly better CPU....I had a 3000+ initially and changed to a 3700+ with all the recent price drops and there is a noticeable improvement in all things video related.....

Are you only looking at analogue TV cards ?? I would recommend the Terratec 2400i DT as a great inhabitant of the PCI-e x1 slot on said mobo

Thanks for the all the suggestions. I was going to use the TV card with my sky box, and freeview - is that possible?

squiffy · 28 Aug 2006 at 14:59

kevpuk said:
MSI K8NGM2-FID is a cracking board for MCE....integrated GeForce 6150 (not the weedier 6100 on some of its competitors ) with DVI, VGA, S-Video and Component output !! (Dunno if there is an AM2 equivalent....?????)

Other 6150 motherboards have VGA and DVI, only Component output is useful (but that won't pass HDCP whenever HD fully takes off) So DVI is best.

Bloodshot · 28 Aug 2006 at 15:13

squiffy said:
Other 6150 motherboards have VGA and DVI, only Component output is useful (but that won't pass HDCP whenever HD fully takes off) So DVI is best.

Would I need the component out for Sky?

squiffy · 28 Aug 2006 at 15:25

Does your display have Component inputs? For future upgradability you want a video card with HDMI output with HDCP support, but I don't think any exist yet.
Sky HD won't work over Component afaik, only over HDMI. This is for the boxes, dunno about PC's with Sky decoders. :confused:

michael baxter · 28 Aug 2006 at 15:37

Bloodshot,

I would recommend your primary focus should be on noise, rather than performance. A media center PC isn't as demanding as this thread is making out, in my opinion. My media center is based on an Athlon XP 2500+ with 1G of PC2700, with an old GF4 graphics card with TV out. Although the GF4 is not officially recommended, it works very well for me until I upgrade to a 6200 and widescreen flat panel. If you want to play games though, you may need something more powerful in terms of CPU and GFX. I say 'may' because last night I recorded 'As good as it gets' while playing Wolfenstein multiplayer with no problems of any kind.

The noise is what bothers me most, and I would recommend using Zalman cooling products where possible. Obviously, you will need a case and motherboard that allows the fitment of these products. Also, Samsung hard drives are considered the quietest. Passive cooling on the Northbridge and graphics card will help.

Freeview is worth looking at, Hauppauge Nova-T 500 looks good with dual decoders and a single aerial connection. For a video input from a Sky box, you may be able to use a Hauppauge WinTV-GO card and they are very cheap. However, as I understand, all decoder cards are required to be identical.

May I suggest you ditch Sky and just go with Freeview? If you are not familiar with Freeview, you may be surprised at the large number of channels and excellent programming!

Finally, I notice the absence of a DVD decoder, I use the nVidia DVD decoder software, although modern graphics cards may do this in hardware.

Just my thoughts,

Michael

kevpuk · 28 Aug 2006 at 15:38

Well, the Cinergy only has a single aerial input.....'nowt else on the card

......so not much cop for Sky/other video sources.....but is already a twin digital tuner

As far as HDMI output etc., there is always going to be the PCI-e x16 slot.....and when ALL the gfx cards start actually putting out HDCP signals (as opposed to 'HDCP-compliant'

- pay the licence fees, boys :eek:

) there is your upgrade route.....

squiffy · 28 Aug 2006 at 15:44

michael baxter said:
My media center is based on an Athlon XP 2500+

Does that scale Mpeg-II, IV to HD size without dropping frames? Use FFDSHOW and enable for RAW and DIVX/XVID material. Play SD AVI's, DVD-Videos, and downloaded HD DIVX/XVID videos. Set OSD on to check it's scaling. If doing scaling on the video card (not ffdshow) I agree 1 ghz machine should do, but scaling does need a bit of power (75% CPU usage on my 3700+)

Bloodshot · 28 Aug 2006 at 15:44

squiffy said:
Does your display have Component inputs? For future upgradability you want a video card with HDMI output with HDCP support, but I don't think any exist yet.
Sky HD won't work over Component afaik, only over HDMI. This is for the boxes, dunno about PC's with Sky decoders.

The TV is the Samsung LCD (32") that the 360 was marketed on. I presume it has component inputs? It's away for repair at the moment so I can't check.

This already has freeview built in I think - not sure how that would work with a PC connected to it?

I think the standard Sky box only uses component - but i'm not sure. Hmmm...

michael baxter · 28 Aug 2006 at 15:55

squiffy said:
Does that scale Mpeg-II, IV to HD size without dropping frames? Use FFDSHOW and enable for RAW and DIVX/XVID material. Play SD AVI's, DVD-Videos, and downloaded HD DIVX/XVID videos. Set OSD on to check it's scaling. If doing scaling on the video card (not ffdshow) I agree 1 ghz machine should do, but scaling does need a bit of power (75% CPU usage on my 3700+)

Why would I want to scale mpeg2/4 to high definition size? Is this what you mean?

I haven't found any problem with any formats, files, DVDs or downloads.

Your posting reads as techno-babble, but I apologise if I'm just ignorant.

In summary, everything works well for me!

Btw, an Athlon XP 2500+ runs at 1.8Ghz not 1Ghz.

squiffy · 28 Aug 2006 at 16:05

You want to scale the video to your native rez of your screen. Media Player and FFDSHOW does this, but FFDSHOW resizing uses algorithims to scale and it improves the picture considerbly, but it does require more CPU power. Some people recommend 3ghz P4's for video playback (check avsforum) My P4 1.6ghz is fine playing AVI's without FFDSHOW scaling enabled, but with scaling enabled, it's incapable of showing movies to 800x600 without dropped frames, let alone native 1024x768...and forget 1366x768 (LCD TV) or 1680x1050 (monitor rez)

michael baxter · 28 Aug 2006 at 16:14

As I've already written, I have no problems of any kind!

I'm setup to run at 800x600 and output to a regular 4x3 conventional TV.

Is the point you're trying to make related to widescreen flat panels, as they have a single native resolution?

squiffy · 28 Aug 2006 at 16:22

michael baxter said:
As I've already written, I have no problems of any kind!

I'm setup to run at 800x600 and output to a regular 4x3 conventional TV.

Is the point you're trying to make related to widescreen flat panels, as they have a single native resolution?

My point is you're not scaling like with FFDSHOW filters. Like I said my 1.6ghz machine plays back fine until I use ffdshow scaling. Here's what you need to do. You're recommending to people to buy a slow CPU, that's fine for non scaling and music playback, but not when using FFDSHOW scaling.

Uninstall Xvid and Divx codecs (if installed)
Download FFDSHOW and install it.
Open up Video Decoder Configuration
Select Resize and aspect. Tick it. In Specify Size, enter in your panel native rez (ie 1024 x 767 for my 14.1" laptop)
Tick OSD. Apply settings and close it.
Now playback a AVI file. You'll notice FF in the taskbar will appear, and green text on the top left. It'll show Input 460x320 (example) then output 1024x768 (LCD) If you open task manager CPU overhead you'll notice CPU load is far higher than before. This is because FFDSHOW is applying scaling.

Read here for more info.
http://www.digital-digest.com/articles/highdefdvd_test_page2.html

TO get FFDSHOW to scale DVD's you'll need to use a DVD player software that integrates with FFDSHOW, ie TheatreTek. Scaling DVD's seem to be even higher CPU requirement. Again this can be verfied with the OSD text. Region 1 DVD 480 vertical scaled to 768 (LCD TV)

Bloodshot · 28 Aug 2006 at 16:28

Some pretty useful information in here guys, cheers

.

Anyone know more about the whole Sky to PC issue? Also - if I go from Sky to PC, can I also then from freeview to PC so I can record Sky, and then watch Freeview at the same time?

This is what I have down at the moment:

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Antec NSK2400 Desktop Case - 380W SmartPower PSU (CA-053-AN) £58.69
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 2.2GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail (CP-164-AM) : £64.57
Corsair 1GB DDR2 Value Select PC5300 Dual Channel Kit (2x512MB) (VS1GBKIT667D2) (MY-083-CS): £70.44
Asus M2NPV-VM Micro ATX (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-145-AS): £58.74
Samsung SH-W163 16x16 DVD±RW Serial ATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) (CD-076-SA): £28.14
Hauppauge WinTV PVR-500 Media Centre Edition Dual TV Tuner (GX-028-HA): £111.57
Samsung SpinPoint T HD300LJ 300GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-032-SA) £64.57
Microsoft Windows XP Media Centre 2005 Edition - OEM - 1Pk (M93-00200) (SW-008-MS): £77.54
Microsoft Remote Keyboard for Windows XP Media Center Edition - OEM (KB-053-MS): £58.74

Total: £593 (inc VAT)

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As you can see this is within my budget, which is great. Just concerned about the motherboard and it's lack of a component input right now.