HTPC

[Veritech]

Couple of questions,
1) are there any HTPC news groups
2) any one got any "useful" ideas for the below spare parts

1ghz celeron 370pin(coppermine it think)
asus tuwe(matx, 3 pci, no agp, 810 chipset i think)
256 mb sdram pc 100(128 x2)
32x cd-rom

got a case already, looking to spend max of £50. Ideas so far are, media
centre pc, network server, and network media server(basically like a MC pc
but minus an display card aka one big hard drive)

Thanks
--
"Blu-Ray"
2600+Sempron (O/C @2.046Ghz)
512Mb DDR 400
9600 pro 128 (O/C @ 425/540)
Gigabyte 7VT600P-RZ mobo with 400mhz fsb
Raidmax cobra case with 420w psu

 

[John]

Couple of questions,
1) are there any HTPC news groups
2) any one got any "useful" ideas for the below spare parts

1ghz celeron 370pin(coppermine it think)
asus tuwe(matx, 3 pci, no agp, 810 chipset i think)
256 mb sdram pc 100(128 x2)
32x cd-rom

got a case already, looking to spend max of £50. Ideas so far are, media
centre pc, network server, and network media server(basically like a MC pc
but minus an display card aka one big hard drive)

Thanks

Who knows --- maybe with a hardware encoding card like the Hauppauge
150 you could get away with a fairly old chip. I have it but still
havent tested it yet with my new PC which will finally be complete
when my 800XL comes Tuesday.

I did install it in my old 2nd PC a 1 gig Athlon which would be a good
test actually more in line with what you are thinking about doing. You
can download the trial versions for Beyond TV and SageTV and use them
fully for a limited time to try them out. I have links to both at
Anandtechs. Ive actually installed them on my 1 gig with the Hauppauge
150 which is probably the most popular TV tuner card nowadays but I
prefer Sage TVs interface but it keeps crashing so far.

Im going to test Beyond TV next.


Theres some websites with forums
Build Your Own PVR
http://www.byopvr.com/

http://www.byopvr.com/Sections+index-req-listarticles-secid-1.html

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,59088,00.html

AVS forum
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?s=4f3131aea6cffcad680aa873388524ac&forumid=11


http://www.anandtech.com/multimedia/showdoc.aspx?i=2133
http://www.anandtech.com/multimedia/showdoc.aspx?i=2234

 

[kony]

Couple of questions,
1) are there any HTPC news groups
2) any one got any "useful" ideas for the below spare parts

1ghz celeron 370pin(coppermine it think)
asus tuwe(matx, 3 pci, no agp, 810 chipset i think)
256 mb sdram pc 100(128 x2)
32x cd-rom

got a case already, looking to spend max of £50. Ideas so far are, media
centre pc, network server, and network media server(basically like a MC pc
but minus an display card aka one big hard drive)

Thanks

That's a pretty open-ended question...
max of £50 won't do anything useful though, for starters you
need a fairly large HDD, else what's the point of a separate
fileserver? HTPC could use an existing LAN for video
storage and retrieval but the 50 isn't even enough to
stretch for a hardware capture card and a low-end hard
drive. With a hardware encoder type of capture card the
Celery 1GHz is fast enough, yet with a software based
encoder it's marginal, can probably do moderate (640x480)
resolution MPEG2 but it'd be borderline, possibly inadequate
for MPEG4/Divx/WMV/etc.

The system is well suited for either light, general-purpose
use like office/email/web, or a file server (whether it be
media files or some other is rather irrelevant if this is
for a single or very limited number of users, such that it's
not an issue of needing more memory to cache entire files
and such, there wouldn't be large #s of requests to serve).
That's probably what I'd do with it, turn it into a file
server, no more involved than NAS functionality and maybe
even underclock the CPU, as a Celeron 1GHz on 66MHz FSB
(667MHz resulting speed) is cool enough running that it
might be cooled passively with the right airflow, even more
likely if undervolted to ~ 1.35-1.45V. Celery @ 667 is
certainly fast enough for 100Mbit lan for 2 or 3 users, the
amount of memory would be more significant up to a certain
point.

Need a few remote video cameras? Get some usb 'cams and set
up a streaming video server.

Then there's always the option of finding some needy person
and giving it to them or charging them almost nothing