Can this inherited pc be an htpc

B

Biennerienno

Weaksauce
Joined
May 2, 2001
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Hi Guys

I just came into a Gateway SFF pc just like amdmaddness's that has been modded on the htpc forum. Mine has all the old working parts which include:
p3 700
256 meg Ram
Onboard sound
Onboard Vid

It has two open PCI slots which i was thinking could be used for sound and for a Tuner card. but is the pc powerful enough to be an htpc. If not, what do you guys thinkg i should use it for, its just sitting on the floor right now.....

/edit
my main goal would be PVR recording. Not necessarily needed for day to day watching of tv, just when i want to record something. not worried about channels changing slow and what not. thnks

Thanks

Biennerienno
 
To tell you the truth that pushing it pretty close. I've looked around and the Hauppauge website isn't real helpful with the system requirements. For the pvr-250 it looks like you need a 733mhz cpu to time shift but it doesn't say specifically what the requirements are otherwise. It is the same for the 250mce except it says 1.2ghz p4. For the 350 iit plainly says that it requires a minimum 733mhz p3. Sorry that's kinda vague but just search for the requirements of pvr cards and if you can find one that works, poof htpc!

It should be fast enough for playback of recorded tv, dvds, divx and such, though.
 
i think video editing and recording might have lag actually. Many times when encoding with my gateway athlon 800mhz, i ran into some problems with lagging. Especially when using adobe premiere. But who knows, I was using a very old ati all-in-wonder card, or either the processor or ram couldnt keep up.
 
You'll be pushing it, but as long as you have a hardware based tuner you should be "ok". Any software based tuner is going to be unbearable.
 
Biennerienno said:
Hi Guys

I just came into a Gateway SFF pc just like amdmaddness's that has been modded on the htpc forum. Mine has all the old working parts which include:
p3 700
256 meg Ram
Onboard sound
Onboard Vid

It has two open PCI slots which i was thinking could be used for sound and for a Tuner card. but is the pc powerful enough to be an htpc. If not, what do you guys thinkg i should use it for, its just sitting on the floor right now.....

/edit
my main goal would be PVR recording. Not necessarily needed for day to day watching of tv, just when i want to record something. not worried about channels changing slow and what not. thnks

Thanks

Biennerienno
Click to expand...


I have ran my pvr350 on a 300mhz p2 with 92megs of ram before.. with not a lag to be found.. it does everything itself encoding and decoding.. this is using mythtv as well..
 
Snag one of those taulation adapters and put a 1.3ghz 256k cache celeron in there and better power supply and I think it would do pretty well. The adapters can be had for around $10 these days and the CPU used around $30 if you sell off the pent 3 you can make some of your money back(oh and get rid of that passive heatsink to). Its hard to find a PSU for one of those cases I ended up getting mine at newegg.com for around $20 refurb.
 
You can run a HTPC setup on less if you have hardware-based en/decoding. The Hauppage 350 is pretty good if you run with Redmond, otherwise you'll need to make use of a bit more CPU horsepower as Linux compatibility is a ways off yet.
Look at it this way, the Tivo has a crappy MIPS CPU and 32MB/RAM. With hardware that's more than enough to run a PVR. (A mid-end PDA has more horsepower.)
 
nephilim said:
You can run a HTPC setup on less if you have hardware-based en/decoding. The Hauppage 350 is pretty good if you run with Redmond, otherwise you'll need to make use of a bit more CPU horsepower as Linux compatibility is a ways off yet.
Click to expand...

how do you figure that? the pvr350 is perfectly stable under linux, and i imagine requires much less overhead then a full windows install..
 
The 350 isn't as well supported under linux, take for example the Svideo in/out. Maybe that has change with a very new version of Myth, I don't know, check around. It has nothing to do with stablity but instead some features that don't work right.
 
CrimandEvil said:
The 350 isn't as well supported under linux, take for example the Svideo in/out. Maybe that has change with a very new version of Myth, I don't know, check around. It has nothing to do with stablity but instead some features that don't work right.
Click to expand...

honestly maybe you should check out http://ivtv.sf.net everything is supported.. tv in out thru all cables... not sure where you are coming from.. pvr350 support has nothing todo with myth and everything todo with ivtv.. using linux also allows you to use the pvr350 as your video card.. something windows cannot do with the card..
 
I didn't say I knew everything about linux or that it won't work. I could care less about making my linux box into a HTPC- not worth my time. As far as I know the current build fixed the issues that I heard about. All I've heard was that under linux somethings with the 350 didn't work right, I also said that the problems that I heard about coulda been fixed by now, Honestly...:rolleyes:

using linux also allows you to use the pvr350 as your video card.. something windows cannot do with the card..
Click to expand...
So? I have a video card already, how is this even remotely useful then? It's not like the linux drivers are very good anyways for ATI and NV cards. I really don't care if linux is better then win or not.
It's all moot anyways since my 250MCEs haven't even been tested. I do hope others use this to build drivers for other OSes, I'd love to get a G5 and mod myself a cool Mac HTPC. :D
Uh I need some coffee and then sleep, blame this post on that.
 
before discouraging someone to not use something.. you should be up to speed on it.. rather then guessing...

that is all
 
i'm pretty sure that on a slightly less powerful setup you would be able to record low quality video and watch it at a later time, but i'm almost positive you won't be able to record and play at the same time. To be perfectly honest though, i don't think that an HTPC is something you want to do half-assed, because if the quality is shit you're just gonna stop using it. I'd highly suggest using this computer as a frontend and building a decent box, shouldn't cost more than about 500 with a pvr-250.
 
So all arguing aside (intel sucks amd rules, err, anyway)

This computer should be enough to run as an htpc.

I believe i am going to get the 350, although im not completely up to speed on the differences. As far as dropping in an socket adapter, im not sure how compatible it would be, and would rather not spend more than i have to. Im not really out to build a htpc to be honest, but the fact that i came unto this computer for free, i need to do something fun with it.

Maybe you guys can make some more suggestions as to what i should use software wise? There were some rumbilngs about compatability in previous posts so if you all wouldnt mind delving into that a bit further. Im open for suggestions (no problems going linux based)

thanks biennerienno
 
The only differences is that the 350 has SVIDEO in/out and and MPEG 2 encode/decode and a FM tuner. Unless you need TVout then get a 250MCE (comes with FM tuner) or a regular 250.
 
Even if you do need TV-out, you can get a graphics card (not sure if you have an AGP slot, but i'm sure you could get a PCI one) with TV-out which would cost the same and be slightly more versatile in the long run. I'm not entirely sure about the video out quality on the 350 either, but i know that the GF4 MX's have some pretty good quality, while the 5200's apparently have excellent quality.

Software wise if you are experienced with linux or want to spend time figuring it out i'd go with mythTV. There's a distribution called knoppMyth that might work fine for you (it basically does all the installation for you, and depending on hardware and such you may/may not need to do any tweaking).

I think that would be your best option, because with minimal ram/CPU power your comp is probably already going to be pretty taxed by just WinXP.

You should probably try something on XP anyway just to check, and both Snapstream and SageTV have trials you can download, so I'd suggest downloading those.
 
Just some words on the 350:

The quality of the S-Video output is noticably better than what you will see on a normal video card (I have a PVR-350 and an MX400). The caveat is that under Windows, you don't just use it like a video card. The software you use can put the video out through it if it is supported. SageTV does, but there are some issues with certain chipsets if you use the 350 output with UI overlay (and honestly, what's the point with no UI?). In Linux, as mentioned, you can use the output for... everything, which makes life easier. :)

Anyway, software-wise... two obvious suggestions: Windows+SageTV (it costs money, check out the trial) or Linux+MythTV.
 
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