United States of America
I’m new here. Let me describe where I am now and where I would like to go. I currently have Verizon Fios TV with a “HD DVR” set top box. I am just using the DVR part of this because I have an old but large CRT TV set so I don’t yet need the HD service. But I’ve been looking at the very nice large (60”-65”) HDTVs that are becoming available at reasonable prices and have decided to upgrade.
But there are problems with the Verizon supplied DVR STB, my wife records things “to watch later” and then they stay on the STB for months, and it’s almost full now. With HDTV, it will be full in a few days. The problem apparently is that the Verizon STB has a very small hard disk in it. Bad.
So I’ve been searching around on the internet, and discovered MediaPortal. Why not build up a small HTPC and use MediaPortal to record all those HD TV shows? I could put in a 2TB disk drive and store months of her stuff in HD. I notice my desktop computer graphics card (a GTX470) has a HDMI port on it. I probably don’t need a GTX470 in a HTPC, but all the modern cards seem to have HDMI outputs. The new HDTVs all have HDMI inputs, although I don’t need the sound as I plan to split the sound out into a Hi-Fi sound setup.
So my 1st question is: Can I do this with the Verizon Fios HD STB into MediaPortal on a HTPC and then to my HDTV? I think the Fios box has a HDMI output port and outputs 1080i.
My 2nd question is: How do I get the HDMI from the Fios STB into a HTPC? I assume I need some sort of a PCI-e “input” card on the HTPC? What card should I consider for this?
My 3rd question is: How much CPU horsepower do I need, how big a graphics card do I need to run MediaPortal in HDMI 1080i (or p) resolution? How much RAM do I need? How large a power supply? I would also like to stay with WinXP-32. I would like to be able to watch 1 program while recording another program. Or record 2 programs at the same time so I can skip over their commercials. I was thinking that a regular size motherboard case would be easier to cool quietly than one of those tiny atx sizes, am I correct about this?
Thanks for any suggestions.
But there are problems with the Verizon supplied DVR STB, my wife records things “to watch later” and then they stay on the STB for months, and it’s almost full now. With HDTV, it will be full in a few days. The problem apparently is that the Verizon STB has a very small hard disk in it. Bad.
So I’ve been searching around on the internet, and discovered MediaPortal. Why not build up a small HTPC and use MediaPortal to record all those HD TV shows? I could put in a 2TB disk drive and store months of her stuff in HD. I notice my desktop computer graphics card (a GTX470) has a HDMI port on it. I probably don’t need a GTX470 in a HTPC, but all the modern cards seem to have HDMI outputs. The new HDTVs all have HDMI inputs, although I don’t need the sound as I plan to split the sound out into a Hi-Fi sound setup.
So my 1st question is: Can I do this with the Verizon Fios HD STB into MediaPortal on a HTPC and then to my HDTV? I think the Fios box has a HDMI output port and outputs 1080i.
My 2nd question is: How do I get the HDMI from the Fios STB into a HTPC? I assume I need some sort of a PCI-e “input” card on the HTPC? What card should I consider for this?
My 3rd question is: How much CPU horsepower do I need, how big a graphics card do I need to run MediaPortal in HDMI 1080i (or p) resolution? How much RAM do I need? How large a power supply? I would also like to stay with WinXP-32. I would like to be able to watch 1 program while recording another program. Or record 2 programs at the same time so I can skip over their commercials. I was thinking that a regular size motherboard case would be easier to cool quietly than one of those tiny atx sizes, am I correct about this?
Thanks for any suggestions.
