HTPC from scratch, need help

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Kendrak

[H]ard|DCer of the Year 2009
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Aug 29, 2001
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I'm wanting to build a nice, network dependent HTPC. I have the main rig in sig below, so I have plenty of power to encode divx, and mass HDD space will be taken care of with the fileserver. What this box needs to do is record tv - saveing it local or on the server, play back divx/mpg2 and mp3. DVD player is a given. For the most part it will be a set top box to play the 100+ divx movies and TV shows I have currently and 100's more once I finnish converting the rest of my collection.
On the cheap while still making it a viable solution is the objective.
I'm thinking a XP2000 (or something close) that can be had for under 60 shipped.
I have no clue what would be a good mobo or case, simple black slimline would be perfect
I have Ram (from an system that burnt out a year ago)
HDD for ~100 (largets seagate I can get for the money)
From reading around here I'm thinking the pvr250 would be the card to get
I have basic Vid cards comming out my ears (rez will probably not be over 800x600, 32"tv, and no games)

What I need...... slim case, mobo, and recomendations on how fast a prossesor truly needs to be for this aplication.
I might end up running linux on it, however i've never been very good at setting up samba

Any and all advice is welcome, thanx

PS: If this can be done for under 500 work will comence shortly after newegg can get the parts here.
 
I found this Asus motherboard which looks good and the antec minuet. An XP 2000+ would be plenty fast. I think 1.2GHz pentium equivalent is reccomended for PVR250s but many people here use even slower.

The 2000+ is $52. But I might consider the 2400+ Thorton because it is a Barton with half the cache disabled so you might get better thermal results. It's $15 more though.

Get the PVR 250 or 250mce at pcalchemy.com. You might even want to get the SageTV bundle if you use windows. If not just get the card, it's a good price there.

I think that comes out to like, 350ish or less.

Edit: And I'd recommend this remote in conjunction with girder (windows) or lirc (linux).
 
I figured I'd ask this in here since it is a smaller question......
Is a 100 bace ethernet network fast enuf to record mpg2 to a computer on the network? I am thinking about putting and old 6 gb HDD in the HTPC box and haveing the file server take care of all the fun of keeping all of the files.
 
I would think so Kendrak, but I think alot of it will depend on quality of the recording, network traffic etc. I'm replacing the mobo in my htpc with that Shuttle board SJetski71 recomended along with some ram and I'll try it myself this weekend and let you know how it works out.
 
Kendrak said:
I figured I'd ask this in here since it is a smaller question......
Is a 100 bace ethernet network fast enuf to record mpg2 to a computer on the network? I am thinking about putting and old 6 gb HDD in the HTPC box and haveing the file server take care of all the fun of keeping all of the files.
Click to expand...

You're not going to see more than about 12Mbps on an MPEG-2 stream (depends entirely on what quality you record at), so even recording one and watching another, you should have bandwidth to spare.
 
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