Media Center PC parts....

Nakatomi2010 · November 2007

So, I was wondering if anyone has any input.... My plan is to do a hefty upgrade on my media center PC...

I'm going Hi-Def....

The first piece of this puzzle seems obvious... This Guy... Essentially cost effective BluRAY/HDDVD player...

The question though is how effective will the drive be?

The machine is going to be an E6300 Core 2 Duo processor with about 2GB of RAM and I'll be investing in an ATi HD 2600 Pro, for the DVI/HDMI ports....

How well will this machine be able to play HD content?

Will this machine be able to play HD content on a standard TV (Obviously not in HD quality) and how well would it work out for me?

I'm planning in advance, this will be the first step to convincing the wife for an HDTV... Start buying HD movies to play back in an HD capable device and complain about how it would look better on a HDTV.....

scratchdesk · November 2007

I was looking at those not long ago. What I found is that the software to play the movies is horrid. Sound quality is poor and it doesn't work with all movies for some reason. I have a PS3 mind you so I have one outlet for HD movies and I was considering purchasing a cheaper Toshiba HD player. Other than that I don't know a whole lot more but personally, I'd wait till the devices move into their second or third phase of development.

EliteLamer · November 2007

On the topic of Media boxes what do you need to build one because I have a old emachine with Xp 2600 in it and some ram. Is that good enough to build something that is not High def? Or is there any point since I have my computer in the same room as the TV about 4 feet away from it.

Nakatomi2010 · November 2007

scratchdesk wrote: »

I was looking at those not long ago. What I found is that the software to play the movies is horrid. Sound quality is poor and it doesn't work with all movies for some reason. I have a PS3 mind you so I have one outlet for HD movies and I was considering purchasing a cheaper Toshiba HD player. Other than that I don't know a whole lot more but personally, I'd wait till the devices move into their second or third phase of development.

I think this is a second gen device from the brief research I did...

In response to the post above mine...

The purpose of a Media Center PC varies from person to person.... I wanted a machine to handle ALL media purposes... It is my DVD player, it is my cable box, it is my stereo, it is the centerpiece to my entertainment at home... I basically have my Media Center PC, my surround sound receiver, and my Wii...

Other people would have, Cable box, surround sound receiver, DVD player and/or BluRAY Player and/or HD DVD player, and other entertainment products...

Essentially my Media Center PC reduces clutter by merging several pieces together into a single box. It's got three 500GB drives, each with various media content, each nearly full of said content from which I play things back on.... My entire DVD collection is on one of these 500GB drives.... TV Shows on another....

The other pupose of the box is storage... I do alot of downloads, and I have my box set up for concurrent log ins, so while I sit here watching TV on one user account, I can log in remotely using another and begin a download off some various website online....

Anyways... For a person like me the box is extremely useful....

DiannaoChong · November 2007

if your using linux hd playback for hd-dvd is really hard to do, time and effort wise, and it only works on some movies. I have no idea how blu-ray is going. I was going to pick up the 360 drive becuase it works with ubuntu, but in order to do hd-dvd playback its a huge pain in the ass. It might even require ripping all the content, and ripping a hd-dvd takes a while.( I hear the entire process is fairly strenous on pcs at the moment as well)

I would wait until theres better support to be honest, and by then maybe there would be a winner in the format war.....

Edit: your using your pc exactly like me! haha... down to the 500 gb drives. Im gonna pick up a hd tuner soon I think, have you seen any decent ones?

Nakatomi2010 · November 2007

I've already got an HVR-1600.... I want the 1800 for the PCIE 1x slot, but I'll have to hold off on that....

What I REALLY want is a digital cable TV tuner card, but I've gotta wait for one of those to come out to the general public....

scratchdesk · November 2007

Nakatomi2010 wrote: »

I've already got an HVR-1600.... I want the 1800 for the PCIE 1x slot, but I'll have to hold off on that....

What I REALLY want is a digital cable TV tuner card, but I've gotta wait for one of those to come out to the general public....

Is this what you're looking for?:
http://ati.amd.com/products/tvwonderdigital/index.html

Nakatomi2010 · November 2007

scratchdesk wrote: »

Nakatomi2010 wrote: »

I've already got an HVR-1600.... I want the 1800 for the PCIE 1x slot, but I'll have to hold off on that....

What I REALLY want is a digital cable TV tuner card, but I've gotta wait for one of those to come out to the general public....

Is this what you're looking for?:
http://ati.amd.com/products/tvwonderdigital/index.html

You have no idea how much I want to buy that.... But it can only be purchased with new computers... Something to do about licensing and the CableCARD feature....

Edit: I'll be damned......

Nakatomi2010 · December 2007

Alright, going to continue using this thread for my devious purposes here....

I'm debating on the video card, rumaging through Newegg's site I've found a few potentials...

I've decided on going with the ATi Radeon HD 2600 Pro series card, normally I buy Built by ATi cards, which, thanks to their Retail Employee Accomodations programs I could get one for about $110

However, as I said Newegg has brought a few potentials.. This card is going to be put into a Media Center PC, is CANNOT be longer than a Radeon X700 Pro card, so how ever long one of those are is the limit in length for the new card...

The Potentials...

HIS Heatsink, with MIR

Actually after looking closely at what's there its basically a decision between this card and the Built by ATi variant available through Employee Accomodations.....

I like the fact that this card has no fan, it's got the HDMI connection I want, even though its an adapter, it appears to be capable of 1080p, and it's cheaper than Employee Accomodations after MIR (hmmm, expires today).... Also has twice as much RAM.... All around it is a better card, but I have no experience with the HIS company and the reliability of their cards, and this one also has no reviews... 1 Year warranty through HIS while an ATi card would give me a 3 year warranty...

Thoughts, opinions? (It's sole purpose in life is going to be to play back movies and such in HD quality, there will be NO gaming on this machine....)

Click the link in my sig to see the case its going into....

Edit: Sadly, I was able to answer my own question.... I wont be able to use this card, as nice as it would be, due to space restrictions... I'm going to be installing it on either an Intel DG965WH or an Intel DG33TL motherboard, which if you look at these pictures we'll notice that the space between the heatsink on the northbridge and the PCI-E slot is not nearly enough to allow the heatsink on the ard to work properly, on the back side....

Edit: Additional question.... Does ATi no longer make their own video cards beyond their FireGL brand? I only ask because I've searched around a bit and can find a box that looks like it should be a Built by ATi card, but when you read the side of the box it says VisionTek.... And on top of that it doesn't carry VisionTek's Lifetime warranty, so I wondering about that....

Nakatomi2010 · December 2007

Alright, so I've gotten the ball rolling on this project... I've purchased a HIS Tech ATi Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB card... This card came with an DVI to HDMI, which actually does carry audio, so I'm pleased....

The next task is to purchased the Intel Bundle, and the BluRAY/HDDVD drive.... The question I have for you guys is whether or not Newegg does price matching... I'm going to buy the LG GGC-H20L BD/HDDVD drive, but NCIXUS has the drive for about 276 with shpping... If Newegg price matches great, otherwise I'll probably pay for the uber express shipping through NCIX...

Anyone here have any experience with NCIXUS, are they reliable and worthy of my money?

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