[Help] HTPC Newb...

S

Sandbox Magician

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 4, 2005
Messages
142
I know absolutely nothing about HTPCs to begin with...

I know how to build and repair a gaming rig, but that's about it. I'm currently a bittorrent junky, and I have gigs upon gigs of XviD, DivX, and other MPEG-4. I'm also pretty big into television, and record tons of shows every week. I just recently started looking into HTPCs, but I don't really have that big of a need for one.

I currently have a Dish DVR. The Dish network is through SBC, which my mom works for and gets a discount on, so that's why we have the DVR through them. On my receiver it has DishDVR 522 dp Plus on it, whatever that is. All I know is that it has a 100 hour recording limit on it, and I also noticed in small print on the corner of the receiver it says MPEG2. On the back of the receiver it looks like it has a USB port.

My question is what can I do with this? Through this port, would it be possible to transfer any of my XviDs from my PC to the DVR so I don't have to convert and burn to DVDRW? OR would it be possible to transfer recorded shows from my DVR to my PC? Now the receiver says MPEG2 on it, so it probably wouldn't take XviD, but if I converted it down to MPEG2 would that work?

I have no idea how HTPCs work. I basically just don't understand the software part of it. Would it be possible to somehow modify my DVR to accept MPEG4 or something similar?

*EDIT*
And by the way, I have no need for HD. My TV is really old school, it has the coax input only. If the DVR thing just isn't possible, what would be the best way to get my XviDs playing on my TV. I have a 6600GT, but my TV doesn't even have an S-Video or the red/white/yellow inputs. How can I connect my PC to my old TV?
 
You can't mod the DVR to do that, most likely the USB port is disabled and it's meant to be used as a way to control the DVR anyways.

If your TV only has a coax connection then you'll want to get one of those A/V modulaters, they come with a coax input/ouput for your TV as well as svideo and composite inputs for things like game consoles and such. I have one connected to an old TV for things like Xvid videos.
 
That MVP only supports MPEG-1/2, so XviD and Divx won't work. The system in my sig is up and running, but it is in the basement. The television I want to hook it up with is up one floor and somewhere between 15-30 feet away. Is there some way that I can add some hardware to this rig that will output video through a coax?

I know there are TV tuners you can put in that will allow television to input into your computer, but is there something the other way around? Is there something that will output through a coax and run the cable up to the TV so I can use my television as a monitor? Or is there something that can output S-Video that I can hook up to a converter on my television? If it is S-Video, then I would have no audio, but if there is some kind of coax output is it possible?

The second alternative is to build a HTPC, which I would like to avoid if possible. I do have an old 1.1GHz Athlon w/256MB PC133RAM on an old Gigabyte AMD-something chipset w/ a GeForce 3 64MB with S-Video out, but it won't start. I'm pretty sure it just needs a new PSU, and I do know it needs a new HDD, but would this be sufficient enough to run XviDs and DVDs to my television? And keep in mind, my TV only has the coax, not the red/white/yellow or anything.
 
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