A
Anonymous
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Hi everyone... it's my first post here and I'm looking forward to building my HTPC and using MP. I was really happy when I discovered MP was a .Net project as I'm a .Net developer myself so am hoping to get involved in the development in 2005 when I have the time (too many clients right now!).
Anyway, I have an older PC, a Dell 420 Workstation with dual 600Mhz P3's, 512MB of RDRAM and 3 18GB SCSI drives... in it's day (in '99 when I bought it) it was simply the fastest thing in a beige case but now, clearly, it's getting a bit long in the tooth - so I thought I'd convert it to an HTPC... but I have some questions I'd love to get some input on:
1. I live in Australia and am connected to pay-tv via satellite (DVB-s) so, given my PC is not the fastest thing around anymore, I am assuming I will need a DVB-S card with onboard MPEG2 encoding and decoding. I've been looking at the PVR350 and it looks excellent but also very expensive - can anyone recommend any other cards out there?
2. My graphics card is a pretty old 32MB Elsa Geforce 2 - will I need a new graphics card as well?
3. Ditto for the sound card - it's a Soundblaster and still does an adequate job but will I need a new one of those too?
(I'm not planning to use this PC to watch TV on a CRT/LCD - I want it to play back through my TV as you'd expect)
4. It's a pretty noisy machine (fans mostly) so can anyone recommend some good quiet fans... it's not an area I really know anything about.
5. I need a nice quiet drive - think I'll go for one of the Samsung's everyone's recommending.
Anything else I need to think about? If I put in a DVB-T card later on will that also work with MP?
Looking forward to some expert input!
Mike
Anyway, I have an older PC, a Dell 420 Workstation with dual 600Mhz P3's, 512MB of RDRAM and 3 18GB SCSI drives... in it's day (in '99 when I bought it) it was simply the fastest thing in a beige case but now, clearly, it's getting a bit long in the tooth - so I thought I'd convert it to an HTPC... but I have some questions I'd love to get some input on:
1. I live in Australia and am connected to pay-tv via satellite (DVB-s) so, given my PC is not the fastest thing around anymore, I am assuming I will need a DVB-S card with onboard MPEG2 encoding and decoding. I've been looking at the PVR350 and it looks excellent but also very expensive - can anyone recommend any other cards out there?
2. My graphics card is a pretty old 32MB Elsa Geforce 2 - will I need a new graphics card as well?
3. Ditto for the sound card - it's a Soundblaster and still does an adequate job but will I need a new one of those too?
(I'm not planning to use this PC to watch TV on a CRT/LCD - I want it to play back through my TV as you'd expect)
4. It's a pretty noisy machine (fans mostly) so can anyone recommend some good quiet fans... it's not an area I really know anything about.
5. I need a nice quiet drive - think I'll go for one of the Samsung's everyone's recommending.
Anything else I need to think about? If I put in a DVB-T card later on will that also work with MP?
Looking forward to some expert input!
Mike