Newbie interested in htpc (1 Viewer)

[thug1690]

hi i am new here have had a look around at a few options availible to me i am thinking of taking the first steps to setting up a htpc it seems like the perfect sillution to my never ending media collection that clutters up my rooms in house on dvds .. i am a download crazy movie freak my gf and i like nothing more than to cuddle up and watch a few flicks but enough of that to the question at hand

i have a old system siting around in my house that is doing nothing i am thinkin on using this to set up and se where it takes me from there the system i have is a advent t9 multi media pc i dont no if this will be enough or not the specs can be found here UKT Support - Advent T9 PC also through my trips onto ebay i have found several pci controler cards i was thinking along the lines of using 3 500gb ide drives and a dvd rom or burner on the pc ide slots and 4 1tb satas running from the pci controler card the board can support up to 4gb of ram .. and through reading what the clown had said on here about what he had set up i am wondering if this wouldbe posible or if it needs a bigger board or maybe just a fresh build for this project .. but you all no more than i do on this so i am mearly asking for a little help with this here any advice would be helpfull i found using mp over the last few days mucking around with it on my main system to get formilure with it set up and confiquration it is not a hard prog to set up and get running but i havent touched the tv side of things yet lol ... i am using a digivox xl for my tv i no i seen a plugin on here for the dbox i am thinkin on that for my next buy after i get this set up as well u all no how these box's are after a time they get to be umm how could i put it anoying to say the least ....

hope some one can help out with this idea as it would be a shame for this once old good pc to sit and gather more cobwebs in bottom of my storage cupboard .. ooo and sorry for the spellin ..

 

[ryan20021982]

I think it all depends on what you will be playing, if its just divx and xvid videos then it would be fine, I'm not sure what that video card can handle, but if you want to venture into HD then I would just start with a fresh mobo and cpu. But you could use some stuff from that pc like the drives and the hdd for the OS if you wanted it seperate, which I prefer.

I would get something with either Nvidia GeForce 8200 or ATI Radeon HD 3200 or better. And an AMD 4850e or 5050e, but thats personal opinion.

That way down the road if you wanted to play HD and dont know there is no need to upgrade and you can always add a Blu-ray drive also later
and be ready and not have to upgrade then. Personally I like to be set for down the road.

 

[thug1690]

thanks for the reply i am going to set it up using this system as a stand alone sepret from my main system .. i was planing on using the system to stream avi and div x for now till i get more fimilure with the running of it then i will consider seting up a more advanced system but this is mear a simple basic set up as of now to get me up and running and let me play with all options i have availible to me and i can start to orginise all my files and get ready for the bigger one in the near future as just now i am hooked to this i love the idea i can have all my media local and orginased and yea will no longer need to get moaned at for my dvds and so on clutering up my house lol .. the pennys at moment are pritty tight due to not having work at moment but things should change realy soon being a chef it aint hard to find work ..

once again thanks for the input .. hopefully when i get all set up and running as i like it and get more into this i can learn what i need to to help out the others that come along that are new like i am and can offer a little donation to say thank you .. way i look at things a comunity is built on helping and support from users that are more advanced than others .. i would like to learn and become a active part of this in my spare time

looking forword to the makin a ass of things having to redo all again and then the final set up workin just right i love the idea of learning and reusing what i have for now till i can get sorted to be more upto date and feel more how can i put it wise and have the knoledge to do so i beleve starting small and learning basics to build up to bigger and better is always the way to go

peace and all that good stuff

*** Thug ***

 

[etheesdad]

yeah its fine. my first machine was a 2.4ghz p4 with 1gb ram and it ran rc3 and rc4 of MP doing SD TV (with two tuner cards able to run simultaneously) and xVids no problem. The issue (as pointed out above) is when you start doing HD (TV, blu ray, 1080p, 1080i etc) and then its really time for a dual core and a decent GPU.

But for SD that machine will run fine even with only 1gb ram. MP doesnt need much ram to run fast and responsively (assuming its a dedicated htpc and you're not using other ram-hungry apps on it)