need help building a mediacenter pc with a menu interface . & remote operation, kinda like a divo settop. heres what i have so far jetway pa78vm3 am2+ mombo socket am2 amd a64 3.0 ghz cpu ddr2 800 ram 4gig ait diamond pcie 16x 1gb video seagate 1tb hdd winxp which tvtuner card is the best for this project. i thought of this one DIAMOND ATI TV Wonder HD 650 Combo TVW650PCIEWB PCI-Express x1 Interface - OEM seems to do what i want i just wanna play movies from the hdd like a divo/ recever. any help would be of great help. z
You don't need a TV card to play video from the hard disk, TV cards are for receiving signals from external sources (i.e. TV aerial or Cable/Satellite box) and receiving them on the PC to display with a PC monitor. For your purposes, you can either do what I do and just select a file in windows and open it with Media Player Classic or VLC, or you can do what many users here do, which is use XBMC, a Media Center program for PC. http://xbmc.org/
As long as the tuner card has built-in mpeg hardware encoders it will work on a dvr. (according to the specs the card you want has the hardware encoders). Built-in hardware encoders allow you to use more than one tuner card at a time. I have 4 tuner cards (pvr-150) installed on my mediapc, also 4 hard drives. This allows me to record 4 different shows at the same time. Your motherboard is the only weak part not enough PCI slots. On my mediapc, I built it around the motherboard. One tuner card is just not realistic for a mediapc, but it's a start. My original mediapc had only one tuner card but it was too limited for everyday use. For a good dvr experience you need a good mediapc software. The only ones I recommend are sagetv or beyondtv (both have a 2 week trial) there are also free media softare available but they require alot of tweaking to get them to work. Beyondtv is as close as a tivo experience as available. I use sagetv for the past 3 years and it is rock solid on XP, always records all my programs. I use my mediapc as a 24/7 computer (like a vcr).
figured to use a better mombo, anyways. just something to start with, . the tuner is the prob, pvr-150 : where would you get it? about the vcr like system , yeah XBMC :????? sounds interesting it,s strange, what i plan to do is play all my movies from the mc, via, remote /osd system lay divx/mpg from blueray dl. if i am right 50-100 hours are capable on br.(that,s alot of movies) so far i have the system setup in xp64bit w- nero6 blueray burner 4 1tb hdds, tv out card to setup on tv, monitor kb m are still set. configuration for the unit is tricky , want to disable kb/m function run from tv & remote only. quote) I use my mediapc as a 24/7 computer (like a vcr).) what,s your setup?
motherboard = Foxconn Core 2 Quad/ Intel G31/ DDR2/ A&V&GbE/ ATX G31AXK (has 5 available PCI slots) Most motherboards have at most 2 or 3 PCI slots.(cost less then $60.00) Has been running non-stop for almost 2 years. cpu = DualCore Intel Pentium E2140, 1600 MHz (cpu runs cool and is excellent for a mediapc) hard drives = 2x seagates 750mb, 2x seagates 500mb, 1x maxtor 200gb bootdrive 2gb ram 4x haupagauge pvr150 PCI tuner cards. These tuner cards are an older model and only does standard video. Newer tuner cards record in HD. "WORKS" brand 400 watt power supply. streamzap remote sagetv media software this software has no problem juggling 4 tuner cards and watching other recorded videos all at the same time. You can be recording 4 tv shows in the background and be watching a dvd at the same time. I use the motherboards onboard video which is all that is needed for watching regular tv. For HD video the radeon HD4350 (cost 40.00) is a good entry level PCI-E card that runs cool and silent. Some newer tuner cards are now comming out in pci-e. That's another thing to look at.
haupagauge pvr150 PCI tuner card :unavilable might try :Hauppauge ImpactVCB Video Capture Card 558 PCI Interface - OEM or :Hauppauge WinTV-Nova-S-Plus Video Device 790 PCI Interface found a mombo that,ll work:Foxconn G31AX-K LGA 775 Intel G31 ATX Intel Motherboard & : any dc processer but the am2 is fine.for now get 2 dualtuner pci & all set. but single tuner is fine. won,t be recording much right now but on my next settop that,ll be the way to go. just need a good tuner . mostly the videos are on the hdd thus the large tb size. converting to compatable format is another issue
