Possible to build HD HTPC on the cheap?

Buzz Foster · 03-17-2008, 02:28 PM

I have an ASUS A7N8X mobo with an Athlon xp 2400+, one or two gigs of ram, and 750GB hard drive space. The video card is nothing special, but does have DVI out.

I am thinking that it would be worth the money to buy one or two of the tuner cards I have seen that can get analog cable + OTA HDTV and onboard encoders and ditch DirecTV completely. I'm essentially paying $100/month to watch "The Soup", and a bunch of programming that is free OTA, anyway. (And CBS is downgraded to standard def on satellite, anyway! Geesh!)

I do have a network connection behind the set. Is this enough of a system to pull it off? Could I maybe up the processing power and RAM and get away with it? Would I need XP Media edition, or will my existing XP Pro installation be enough?

Thanks!
Buzz

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Parker Clack · 03-17-2008, 05:27 PM

If you want to continue to use Windows for your PVR you are going to have to have a Media Center Edition version of the software. There are some great third party programs out there, in particular Power DVD that does Hi Def.

I have an older HTPC that has an AMD Athlon 64 3200+, Socket 939 mobo with a gig of RAM and it records my SDTV great. I am not sure what you need at a minimum for recording HDM though.

I just picked up a Gateway HTPC that has a quad core AMD chipset with 3 gig of RAM, a terabyte of HD space and a Blu-ray/HD DVD combo drive. I got it all for around $1,000 which as far as I know is the cheapest HTPC out there with a combo HD drive.

Once you go to an HTPC for your PVR you will never go back to using a service like Tivo where you have to pay for the EPG again. Take the $100/month you have been spending and put it towards a new PC that you know will have the necessary software, horsepower, etc.

Parker

Ken Chan · 03-17-2008, 06:35 PM

I run BeyondTV on plain XP, and it works pretty well.

Recording HDTV is not a problem; the tuning hardware generates the bitstream, which any modern hard drive can handle. The CPU does hardly any work. Playback is the issue, especially to deinterlace 1080i. That's where the particular video card and its drivers come into play.

With a "full" HTPC, there's DVD playback, which is mostly solved if you have the right video card and a decent DVD player program. And support for a remote control.

SethH · 03-17-2008, 06:48 PM

I would upgrade to Vista Home Premium. It's a very good system overall and SP1 is due out in the next few weeks.

Parker Clack · 03-18-2008, 11:09 AM

Seth:

Have you heard whether SP1 will have the ability to play Hi Def DVD within Media Center? As it stands now you have to drop out of Media Center to be able to use Power DVD or Beyond TV.

Buzz Foster · 03-18-2008, 12:41 PM

I guess I should specify that I am not looking for Blu-Ray in my system, yet. Right now, this about the alternative to $100/mo Directv. So, there is no reason to worry about upgrading the existing system for that.

Ken:

In an older thread, I looked for a reccomendation for a video upgrade for an older system, and I got this suggestion: Asus N6200 8X AGP. Unfortunately, it didn't work with the system I was upgrading, but I still have it new in the box, and it is beyond the GeForce 4200ti that is in the system I want to use. Will this new 6200 card be enough? That would be great if I could actually end up using this card.

Also, what kind of hard drive speed do I need? This system is ATA-100. I could capture video on ATA-66 on it without a hiccup (that was the original use for this system...analog video capture and editing). I'll have to look and see what the current drives are rated for, but I think they are ATA-100, as well.

The maximum CPUs I could put in it are these: Athlon XP 3000+(333 MHZ FSB)(Barton), Duron 1800 (Model 8)(Applebred), or Sempron 3000+. What is in there now, I have double-checked, and it is an Athlon XP 2400+ (Thoroughbred). It has one GB of Crucial PC2100 266Mhz DDR RAM. Is a CPU or RAM upgrade going to be necessary?

Also, something I would like to do would be to take recorded programs and convert them to a mobile Divx format that I could play on my Zen Vision W. Can the system be set up in such a way as to do those conversions automatically and send them across the network to my desktop system?

And does BeyondTV support tv show downloads? I know some programming is available online (like "The Soup"!), and it would be nice to be able to watch extra programs.

Ken Chan · 03-18-2008, 05:12 PM

If you're just watching TV, a gig of RAM is plenty. The 2400+ CPU should probably be fine as well.

For hard drives, ATA-100 and ATA-66 are the interface (or burst) speeds, which tell you virtually nothing useful except for the approximate age of the drive. The real variable is Sustained Transfer Rate. Having said that, once again you are probably fine with that too. You should definitely get a tuner card with a hardware encoder to handle the analog signal. (Since the card does the work, the CPU is not an issue.) It will probably be in the 6Mbit/s range. OTA HDTV is (I forget) 20ish Mbit/s, straight out of the air and onto the drive. So that's about 3Mbyte/s. A slow ATA-66 class drive might be 10Mbyte/s, so that's plenty. Compare those bitrates with what you successfully captured before.

The problem is the video card, especially with 1080i HDTV. nVidia brands its video processing as PureVideo; looking at the support matrix the features you want for High-Definition Content are MPEG-2 Decode Acceleration, Spatial-Temporal De-Interlacing, and ideally Inverse Telecine. So that's a minimum 7600 GT or 6800 Ultra.

BeyondTV will automatically "ShowSqueeze" recordings into DivX (not sure if it's the exact flavor you want, and that's when CPU power will matter). I don't recall any support for downloading shows, but if you place the video files in the right directory, you can watch them through the interface.

Buzz Foster · 03-18-2008, 06:46 PM

It looks like I can improve speed on the FSB with some new RAM, so I think I may do that to bring it to 333mhz. If I can find a cheap XP 3000+ 333fsb, I may grab it, too.

I think I found a video card: 7600GT. However, I am totally lost on tuner cards. I need a reccomendation there for one that will work with PCI bus, and hopefully has a remote (or will work with a Harmony).

After that, I'll likely be picking your brain for software help.

rjsimmons · 03-19-2008, 11:32 AM

Your system will probably work fine for SD (standard definition), but I would be amazed if it worked for HD (high definition) material. You run into several problems with HD material.

First, it will require significantly form space on your hard disk to hold the recordings. 250GB disk will hold about 30 hours.

Second, playback requirements really require a more powerful/advanced video card. The 7600 you mention may work, but it will be on the edge. There are a number of newer cards out that will not break the bank (the ATI Radeon 2400 models come to mind), but he most inexpensive are all PCIe not AGP.

This can be compensated for by faster CPUs, but you are short on this as well. The AMD 4200 is probably at the low end of acceptable here.

I have seen a low end system specified using current (or at least recent) parts) that came in at about $300. It was AMD based. Look over recent posts in the AVS forum under home theater computers.

Good luck.

(I like the Sage interface, by the way. Great software and minimal system requirements. Very flexible. You can try it for 30 days free.)

Buzz Foster · 03-19-2008, 02:21 PM

WinTV-HVR-1600?

A pair of these and the video card above should do the trick?

Ken Chan · 03-19-2008, 05:29 PM

I didn't notice that you need AGP. If you look at that support matrix, it's mostly PCIe, with AGP to the right. They don't even list the 7600GT AGP, and for whatever reason, sometimes the support is different for the PCIe and AGP versions. You might want to contact nVidia to make sure. Also, they will charge you an extra $30 for PureVideo ($20 for the video part, $10 more for Dolby Digital 5.1). There is a 30-day trial. ATI's competing "Avivo" is "included"

Yes, that Hauppauge should work. I'm using another model with dual analog tuners on one card successfully. Depending on what you're trying to do, and how the 1600 works, you may need two (or more). You may want to check the BeyondTV forums to see what people are saying about that card.

Buzz Foster · 03-19-2008, 11:26 PM

It looks like the video card(s) I bought for my new system last year are the best at what I want to do, and reasonably priced. Ironically, I have discovered that my Crosshair doesn't care for having all four memory slots filled, so I have some spare memory, 2GB of DDR2 800 PC6400 with no system to love it.

A reasonably priced AM2 mobo with a 16x PCIe slot, and two free PCI slots, a processor, and the tuner cards should give me what I want.