Rajeev Dawar

Need help/suggestions for my new HTPC

Hi.
I have a Athlon 1.1 Gig machine with 512 MB Ram, 200 GB Hard drive, Windows XP, Creative 5.1 Live Platinum, and an ATI AIW Radeon video card. This is the first AIW card based on the Radeon chips, I believe the 7200. I also have a DVD-ROM drive and a CD-RW drive.
What I would like to do is add HDTV capability to this machine,mainly as a HD PVR.
I am looking for advice so that I can use what I have and add a couple of things (hardware/software) so that I have a great DVD Player, HD Tuner/NTSC Tuner and PVR (both HD and NTSC), de-interlacer, and video-capture (limited). And for monitor duty, I want to use my Toshiba 65H82 Widescreen HDTV. (It can take 480i, 480p and 1080i).
Thanks a bunch in advance for your advice.

Camp

Others may disagree but I don't think a 1.1. ghz Athlon (regardless of the video card) will manage HD PVR capabilities. Standard definition, perhaps, but not HD.

I'd suggest a mobo/CPU/RAM upgrade before jumping into HD.

Download the HD video samples for WMP9 (at Microsoft's site for WMP9) and test them on your current system. I expect you'll see stutter problems -and that's only in simple playback. The moment you ask it to do full PVR functions it's gonna choke.

Hanson Yoo

Depends if you go software or hardware. The software solutions require a powerful system to capture and play, but the hardware solutions like MyHD or HiDTV have the hardware on board. For instance, MyHD will easily work with your existing specs because it's just copying the HD stream to the hard drive (not a lot of overhead) and the MyHD card handles most of the processing during playback. In fact, if you use the SPDIF out on the card, you don't even need a sound card.

BTW, it's nice to have a 200 GB hard drive. HD streams are 9GB per hour.



Because the existing capture cards are software based, you will not be able to capture analog streams at 640 X 480 with your set up without wicked stuttering.

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Camp

Good point, Hanson, the idea of doing HD in hardware totally skipped my mind.

Hanson Yoo

Rajeev, look into the MyHD MDP120. It's around $300, which is cheaper than upgrading your system and buying a software based system like FusionHDTV.

I bought mine with the understanding that it I'd pay for a restock fee if I couldn't get reception. I bought the Radio Shack bowtie that was recommended, but it didn't work. I bought a Silver Sensor and that sonovabitch worked like a charm.

MyHD will play DVD's, but there's all sorts of problems including macrovision limited fullscreen playback (which can be overcome with DVDIdle) and no DVD style controls like chapter skip and whatnot (MyHD does not pay a license to the DVD consortium, so playback is buggy at best). There is an NTSC tuner included and it can take cable, but the capture will not work with your set up. All NTSC is converted to .avi files that cannot be played by MyHD.

It's great for HD timeshifting, and that's all that matters to me.

Getting out of jury duty is easy. The trick is to say you're prejudiced against all races.

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