Converting an old pc to HTPC

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shady3210

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Apr 3, 2008
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I have an older pc that I have been thinking about converting into a DVR for the living room. I refuse to pay a subscription for a dvr so this seemed like a good solution. I am looking for advice on what else I need and if its worth the trouble. I'm only looking for SD video recording and possilbly a netflix/hulu player.

Pc specs:
Athlon 2500+
1 gig ddr ram
Radeon 9800 pro
100g hd
Win xp
Abit board can't remeber model number but only have PCI and AGP available

TV: 55in Rear projection with hdmi, component, and svideo available

Budget: as cheap as I can get away with but want decent playback on the tv.
 
You'll need to look into front-ends, and see which suits your needs. I personally use SageTV, but there's also Windows Media Center (included in XP-MCE, Vista Home Premium and Ultimate, and Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate), MythTV (though I think this is for linux only), BeyondTV, Meedio, and the list goes on.

100GB HD isn't going to last very long for tv recordings though, I use a 500GB HD just for my recorded TV drive. I'd recommend you get at least 2 new drives, one for tv recordings and one for downloaded or ripped content, if you plan on doing this. You can keep your old 100gig drive as a system drive but it'll probably be faster if you used a newer drive as a system drive, with 2 partitions (system: media:).
 
Thanks for the help guys I might throw linux on it and try mythtv it looks pretty nice. Any recommendations on turner cards? I knew 100gb might get filled up fast but I can always go bigger later if needed.
 
Get a PVR-150 I see them in the FS/FT section all the time for next to nothing.
 
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