Spurned on by PMM’s link to media portal a while ago, I’ve been thinking about building a HTPC. My first thought was to use a shuttle but none of the new shuttles have any PCI slots and nobody seems to make a PCI-e TV card.
I have TUTV and reading the forums on media portal the best TV card to use with TUTV is the Hauppauge NOVA-T. If you want to record a different channel to the one your watching then you need 2 TV cards so I guess thats a shuttle out of the window
While poking about for a case yesterday, I came across this :love: Maybe a bit over the top, who needs a 7" touchscreen LCD on the front of the case :shrug: but I think it looks cool
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Now I just have to sort out what to put in it. My main PC is an XP3000+ Asus AN7. Would this be OK to put into the HTPC then upgrade my main PC or would it struggle.
Is there anybody here with HTPC building experience? I guess the GFX card is one of the most important. Component output would be good but not essential, any recomendations?
If done well, the TV card will do the encoding so the CPU doesn’t have too much to do. It should be plenty for software decoding of current popular formats.
For video out, that depends on what you want to drive with it. I use a FX5200 with s-video out on my projector, and DVI to HDTV. Since I don’t game on this, 3D performance isn’t an issue and running fanless is more important. I do find that s-video output can vary a lot in quality. My FX5200 is from Abit, and works well. I’ve also tried a 9200SE from MSI which is blurry and noisy. If you do want some 3D performance without fan noise, Gigabyte do a passive cooled 6600GT which I’m using in my main rig (bought from quietpc.com), not tried it for TV out though.
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