Ok, So I've got this extra system laying around, dual AMD Athlon 1.1, with a gig of RAM. I've also got 5 180 5200 RPM drives, and the possibility of getting another 2 or 3. Looking at a highpoint raid 5 controller that can handle up to 8 IDE drives. I will probably run the OS on mirrored 80 gig 7200 RPM drives. As Video I was thinking of an ATI Radeon All In Wonder, but maybe a Haupage...I haven't decided yet. All will run in a Thermaltake Xaser III case, and sit next to my entertainment system, watched on a InFocus LitePro 720... This will mainly be a movie and music server, ripping the best of my movie collection, heck...or at least my favorite 200 or so movies. My two concerns are...am I likey to experience video shuttering and if I put in a 6.1 sound card...will the rips be encoded properly to use it? Sound system is an Onkyo 6.1 surround...not top of the line, but not fish bait either. Basically it's a Home Theater system built on a budget, and I'm kind of hoping this system would integrate alright... So experts...how will this work?
Other than the slow speed of the hard drives, it looks good. You may experience stuttering, in higher bitrate video at full resolution. I would go for the Hauppauge, as it takes 100% of the load off the CPU(s), and the ATI still requires some software assist from the CPU. I would run the OS on the slower drive(s), and leave video storage on the faster ones. If this were not a dedicated PVR, I would recommend the opposite, but once loaded, the OS doesn't do much, so there's no point in having it on faster drive(s).
Hmmm... Well I was a bit worried about the 5400 drives, but hey...i've already got them. Guess I can use them for long term storage use, and look at some 250 or 300 gig SATA drives for local media storage. I've got a 1.6 gig athlon I can stick the 180's in... Laugh..guess it's time to upgrade to a gigabyte switch...
so are you planning on streaming the video over a network to other PC's then? I was looking to build a video server that would simply HOLD the DVD images to it. Then have the drive available to the network. I did a test setup and found that my major problem was just getting the video size small enough and a format that could be used by other software. In an ISO format there is very FEW options that dont require a LOT of dicking around. You need a virtual drive, mount the iso, then pretend its the DVD in windvd. I found a program called VLC http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ It will play the ISO images, and will do it fairly well over a networked drive as well. It is also able to stream video form the server over. I have not fiddled with this much yet so I cant say anything about it. If you are looking to a better setup I am happy to hear what your plans are. With P3's being so cheap to get your hands on these days I have all kinds of plans for in home security systems and Video servers, and music servers.
