computer buying suggestions

[dwbrown77]

Hello, I am thinking of buying a dedicated Computer to be used as a television,multimedia center for my living room. Do you have suggestions for the best computer to buy, the equipment I will need. I want merely to watch television, record programs to watch, pause and perhaps put on DVD later. I would also like to use the program that allows you to watch tv from computers on the network.

[soham]

Do you want to buy a ready-made computer or do you want to build your own? If you're going ready-made, most new computers will be able to handle what you want to do. However, they may not have the cool HTPC styling that you may want. If you want to build your own, you can get a cool looking case that will fit right into your entertainment system, but you have to be more careful about getting all of the hardware right.

[w2jo]

I could not get an INTEL P4 CPU on a MB equipped with SIS chipset to operate with TWO Dvico Fusion LITE tuners. I had to switch to a MB with an INTEL chipset to make it work properly. Other than that, it looks like most any MB with 4 or more PCI card slots and an audio system to your liking should work fine. Likely you will want a separate video card so as to be able to have a DVI or HDMI video output to your TV. Be really sure to get a case with a quiet fan AND get a quiet fan for the CPU as well. In a quiet room, the computer fan noise from an ordinary fan set can seem quite loud. Personally, I recommend getting a RAID equipped MB as it has been quite annoying in my TIVO to have to rebuild the disk from scratch every 2 to 3 years as a result of a disk failure. With my RAID equipped computers, when a disk fails, you take the failed one of the pair out, replace it with new and tell your system to rebuild the new drive. After a few hours time, your system is back in redundant mode just like nothing happened. The SATA RAID capability only adds about $10 to the cost of a good MB these days and with disk prices low as well, this redundancy is not hard (for me) to justify.

If you build your own, be careful with some of the new PSU units. Some are equipped with a split off 16pin/alternate 20 pin main power connector so it can be used in a regular ATX with the ordinary 16pin PSU connector or with the new 20 pin power connector. This little 4 pin connector can be plugged into the 4 pin auxiliary power input on INTEL (and maybe other) MBs and I am told this has disasterous consequences.

[AdmA]

i went to delloutlet, spent 280.00 on a Dell 3000 and have had a GREAT box...same solution as yours, just sits in the living room. I have BT4.4 with the firefly and its perfect. Only hitch was I had to get a better video card to support my tv's odd resolution (852x480) other than that, its a great setup....all in all Dell = 280 BT + Hauppauge card and remote = 150 I spent 430 total on my system