tv pc help

dilated · 9 Mar 2006 at 01:27

I am planning to build a pc for my living room. My plan is to build something cheap and quite that will hook up to a tv and allow me to watch satellite (with a skystar2 card) and movies on the dvd player.

I dont have a hdtv, just a plain old widescreen - will there be any issues with a pc that uses this as the primary display and NOT a monitor?

I have seen refurbed P4 Compaq EVO's for £50, I like these pcs because they are silver and will match my silver tv, they are also more expandable than a ssf. Does anyone know of any problems with these pc's?

Curio · 9 Mar 2006 at 01:35

dilated said:
I am planning to build a pc for my living room. My plan is to build something cheap and quite that will hook up to a tv and allow me to watch satellite (with a skystar2 card) and movies on the dvd player.

I dont have a hdtv, just a plain old widescreen - will there be any issues with a pc that uses this as the primary display and NOT a monitor?

I have seen refurbed P4 Compaq EVO's for £50, I like these pcs because they are silver and will match my silver tv, they are also more expandable than a ssf. Does anyone know of any problems with these pc's?

I use my media/file server on a TV and no monitor and it works fine - of course it can be hard to read small text because a TV just can't handle that kind of image very well. As long as you're not planning on doing word processing or browsing around Windows too much you'll be fine. I also use Remote Desktop so I can access the machine from others in my network if I need to actually do anything in Windows - that works really well.

I'm not familiar with the Skystar card at all, so maybe somebody alse will be able to give you more specific advice

dilated · 9 Mar 2006 at 01:54

Thanks for the advice, do you use a s-video to scart and that works fine?

If you are interested in skystart, there is a yahoo group. Bascially it is a pci card that connects to a satellite dish and works with open source software to receive lots of free channels.

Can anyone comment on the Compaq Evo, they seem up to the job; cheaper and more expandable that any shuttle I have looked at.

Curio · 9 Mar 2006 at 04:29

dilated said:
Thanks for the advice, do you use a s-video to scart and that works fine?

I'm in the US so we don't have SCART - just plain old S-Video

dilated · 9 Mar 2006 at 13:23

Curio said:
I'm in the US so we don't have SCART - just plain old S-Video

lol - only saw the Solihull location!

Can anyone else help me?