Critique my proposed setup

T

the Jones

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 7, 2003
Messages
114
Alright here is what I currently have, a mixture of old and reused components:

AMD Athlon 1ghz
384mb pc133 sdram
ATI Tv wonder ve
Philips seismic edge soundcad
Nvidia Riva TNT2 M64 Pro
Generic CD-Rom

What I'm thinking about bying is the Hauppage PVR-350 + SageTV bundle from PC Alchemy. I'm hoping this will give it decent PVR/mp3 jukebox capabilities. At a later point I might upgrade from the bundled remote, but initially I will use the one that comes with the card. I also might later upgrade to a dvd burner, but this is the preliminary setup, and I'm tight on cash. Anything wrong with this setup?
 
Buy a 350 now!
You might want to upgrade the GPU to atleast a 7000/7500 Radeon, I'd drop another 256mbs in there atleast another 128, get a CD burner or maybe a combo drive, if your going to use that CPU then I'd think about getting a Creative card to handle music...then you can mod it for better (read good) music playback ;)
I'm playing around with a pretty cool remote right now, the actually remote is no longer sold but I have found another one like it (Niveus PC Remote Control), you might want to look into it if you want/ need something like a universal RF/IR remote.
One more thing...BUY A 350 NOW! :D

http://store.niveusmedia.com/s.nl/c.304836/sc.2/category.2/.f
 
Seismic edge is a bitch if you'll be using AC3 audio and PCM audio. You have to keep switching between the two before you activate the application. The new AC3 Filter is supposed to encode all sources to DD on the fly, but I haven't tried it yet.
 
Qwijib0 said:
The new AC3 Filter is supposed to encode all sources to DD on the fly, but I haven't tried it yet.
Click to expand...
It's very CPU intensive, I've read people reporting back with 3+gig P4s who can't do it because the video just drops massive frames. While it does sound cool it's not something really usable right now.
 
The ac3 filter supposedly only take between 3-10% CPU usage. The writer said it should take no more cpu usage than it does to decode an AC3 stream.
 
I'm not talking about AC3 streams I'm talking about streaming DD in software (MCP-T does it in hardware).
 
I am talking about AC3 filter as the subject of this thread talks about. I haven't read tooo much into because I haven't messed with WMV-HD except for the demo's so far. I am interested in hearing how it performs though.
 
Yes, I'm going to mainly be using the s-video out on the pvr-350, and secondly I know that the seismic edge sucks. Philips barely even makes drivers for it anymore. I'm just using it until I can get something better.
 
You should check around on the SageTV forums about the PVR-350 S-Video out. With some chipsets, it will freeze with the UI turned on (and what good would it be with no UI?). Others work just fine and dandy. My 845PE box freezes, wish I would have known about the bug before I bought the 350. :) Ah well, it will work in MythTV if I ever get around to it.

I think the RAM and CPU are fine since you are planning on getting a tuner with hardware encoding (and if you use the output, decoding :). I run XP and SageTV with 256MB and I haven't noticed any problems yet.

The PVR-350 remote isn't too bad, it works fine with SageTV, though figuring out the buttons may take a little time (the thing in the setup menu to let you see button commands as you press remote buttons is your friend). I dunno what you plan on using for storage, but a PVR can eat a lot of space. For example, recording at "DVD Standard Play" is about 3.25GB/hr.
 
I think the 350 gui problems are only with intel chipsets and I have a VIA. As for the remote I want something kinda cheap, and the harmony's are over $100. I've been thinking about buying an old lcd remote (ie sony av-2100) that has learning capabilities. Then I could just "teach" it all of the pc commands via the hauppage remote.
 
If $100 is your limit for a remote I HIGHLY recommend the Home Theater Master MX-500. I have it and have recommended it to quite a few friends and everyone has loved it. You can get the remote for just over a hundred shipped from here.
 
Does the niveus remote support macros , ie. "watch tv"?. I'm trying to make this as idiot proof as possible, and I would like it to be able to automatically turn on my reciever/tv/sage with one button.
 
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