Suggestions on Equipment That Gives Great Results - Pls Post

[nasttcar]

I am planning a PVR system and would like to build it around a surplus eMachine. The only other task the machine will have is to be a nightly backup for other computers on my home network.

I would like to dedicate a 2.0ghz Celeron eMachine as the basis of a PVR system. It has 768mb RAM, and onboard sound. It has no AGP slot, so what would the recommendations be for video board and tuner board. I want hardware encoding.

Also, I have a digital Panasonic LCD with S-Vid and component inputs.

Please list your system and how well it works.

Thanks, John

[bradpvr]

Go for the PVR250, you can't go wrong.

[haynes52]

Hauppauge all the way!

i got the 350, it supports hardare decode and encode, Snapstream does not yet support the decode, but if you have the cash might as well upgrade now and when it is available, we will be ahaed of the curve!

as far as video out, i am running onboard video, (it is fairly good inmy case) i am considering a move to a card with a DVI out for my HDTV

I have had a bad time with ATI, but many here seem to be fine with it (for display)

i personally think that Invidia is a better choice, not sure about PCI cards.......


good luck

[jkoon]

Yeah, PVR-250 and a huge hard drive, cant beat it.

[senhwei]

Originally posted by haynes52
Hauppauge all the way!

i got the 350, it supports hardare decode and encode, Snapstream does not yet support the decode, but if you have the cash might as well upgrade now and when it is available, we will be ahaed of the curve!

as far as video out, i am running onboard video, (it is fairly good inmy case) i am considering a move to a card with a DVI out for my HDTV

I have had a bad time with ATI, but many here seem to be fine with it (for display)

i personally think that Invidia is a better choice, not sure about PCI cards.......


good luck

Hi haynes52,

I'm thinking about building a PVR system around a similar set of specs as your system - specifically around the Shuttle 41G2. Just wondering if you could comment on any these questions :

1. Do you have any heat problems running the AMD 2500+ in the Shuttle ?

2. Are you using the TV out from the onboard Nvidia graphics card ? Any problems with that ?

3. Further to number 2 above, what resolution do you output the TV signal at ?

thanks !

senhwei

[haynes52]

Reply:

1. Do you have any heat problems running the AMD 2500+ in the Shuttle ?

Heat is not a prblem, It would depend on whenre you are locating the case, i have it behind glass in in an entertainment unit, it has run hotter there than the floor in my office, but still acceptable. I am also ruinning a prgem called speedfan. It keeps the temps where i want them while lowering the fan noise substatially. they run at about 5%.

As far as noise goes, the system is still noisier than i had hoped, speedfan is a must. I would suggest looking for the quietest hard drive i could find, ithink that is the source of some of my noise.

2. Are you using the TV out from the onboard Nvidia graphics card ? Any problems with that ?

Yes, it is fine so far using a good Svideo cable. I am considering going to an agp card with a DVI out in hopes that it will enhance the image. The image is clear, but dimmer, and i have tried to rectify in the graphics settings ( i have the most recent drivers from the nvidia website, reccomended)

3. Further to number 2 above, what resolution do you output the TV signal at ?

800 x 600

overall i like the shuttle, the pvr card is a tight fit, but the 250 or 350 both fit fine

get speedfan for sure! it is free....


good luck

[Terminal]

Originally posted by jkoon
Yeah, PVR-250 and a huge hard drive, cant beat it.

I don't think a huge hard drive is really all that important. I get by with 72 Gig of storage. I ran it for quite awhile with only 38 Gig. I had a 20 a 12 and a 6 Gig. using every old hard drive I could find. I couldn't leave to many shows in MPEG format or I would run out of space. I didn't want to spend a boat load of money on this system so I found a cheap 40 Gig and took out the 6 now I can usually have 3 or 4 MPEG files on the system and still have plenty of room for my WMV files. My daily shows I just transcode to WMV VHS quality and I will keep 2 or 3 episodes. Movies That I want to burn to DVD I keep in MEPG. I record 3 or 4 shows a day and I have plenty of disk space. If you want to archive then yes you will need mucho disk space

[ynnek888]

a fast HD with a huge cache, so all that video data doesn't get interrupted... I like my Western Digital 80 gig with a healthy 8 meg cache..

I have a Shuttle, uh, 51G i believe..
2.4 celeron..
512 megs of 333 mhz ram,
pvr-250.. nvidia
fx5200 64 megagp vid card.
use the build in audio..
used built in lan before, but now use a tiny USB negear wireless adapter.. (if you plan on copying large files, I'd highly suggest wired 100 network or at least a g wireless network)
Win 2000 Pro (what I had laying around)


The shuttle case is neat, but, if I could do it again, I'd just get a regular small or mid tower case, since i just hide the box behind my tv stand anyways.

[nasttcar]

I've got the eMachine with a 2.0 Celeron and it has no AGP slot. I know I need the Hauppage 250 or 350 to do hardware encoding and I need a vid board for TV out.

Therefore my question about the nVidia board.

[WillP]

I've seen nvidia gf4mx based pci vid cards. gf-FX pci cards may exist. Personally I haven't used a pci video card in quite a while so I don't know how well they work with PVS. You'll have to look around to find one.

Will

[Cayars]

I have an FX 5200 Ultra w/256MB of memory which I'm presently using (DVI output). I also have an ATI All In Wonder VE w/64MB (PCI) that I was using as my main output (S-Video). The output is very similar between the systems but the ATI unit does need more tweeking to get it setup correctly.

Since the ATI is PCI, I would recommend it as a good board to use for output. You also have the ability to use this for input if needed. You can setup the ATI as a second video capture source and split your coax with a splitter and feed both boards. With a little creativity you can stream video out to the Internet in WMV format if you're not recording with the PVR-250. I did this a month ago when I was stuck at work on Monday night and wanted to "watch" monday night football!

It's pretty cool to be able to do this when needed. So if you can pony up a little over $100 for a video card this is a good choice if you have any intentions of every streaming video.

Carlo

[flipper9]

Get a hardware MPEG ENCODER such as the Hauppauge PVR-250 or PVR-350. This will totally remove the load off your CPU when recording videos.

Use a video card(ATI Radeon, NVIDIA NForce2, etc.) or motherboard chipset (NVIDIA NForce2) that has "hardware assist" MPEG decoding capabilities. This will greatly reduce the load off your CPU when watching videos. A motherboard or video card with TV video out (component, svideo, composite, DVI, depends on what your TV needs) is helpful if you want to watch on your regular TV.

If you use hardware encoding and hardware-assist decoding, the speed of your CPU is less important.

If you plan on re-encoding your videos to smaller file-size formats such as DivX or Windows Media, get the fastest processor your motherboard and pocket-book can handle (or get a new motherboard/processor) and 512MB memory.

Get a large hard drive. The exact size depends on whether or not you want to keep a lot of shows online, or if you want to just keep a running collection of recent recordings that get overwritten. Also, it depends on if you choose to re-encode everything to smaller sizes or to go with lower quality settings. I chose to go with the largest hard drive I could afford.

Get a DVD or CD-ROM burner for archiving videos if you want to build a collection.
========================
System #1
Shuttle SS40G XPC
AMD 1700 or 2000Ghz Processor
512MB RAM
Hauppauge PVR-250
SIS Integrated Video
SIS Chipset
120GB DMA100/7500rpm Hard Drive

Monitor: Envision LCD
Output to Television:S-Video
Television: Samsung RPTV 52"
Hardware Assist MPEG Decode:NO
MPEG Decoder: Hauppauge Supplied, with registry tweaks

Playback with MPEG Decoder 1 choppy with high bitrate MPEG (VBR 4-10Mbps). Acceptable with VBR 4-6Mbps
DivX playback choppy.
SVideo output set to mirror monitor. SnapStream set to 640x480 true full screen.
========================
System #2
NVIDIA Nforce2 Chipset
ATI Radeon 7500 with SVideo Out and Component Adapter
AMD 2600Mhz Processor
512MB RAM
Hauppauge PVR-250
200GB DMA133/7500rpm/8MBcache Hard Drive

Monitor: Envision LCD
Output to Television:S-Video, YPrPb Component Video
Television: Samsung RPTV 52"
Hardware Assist MPEG Decode:NO
MPEG Decoder: Hauppauge Supplied, with registry tweaks

SVideo output set to mirror monitor. SnapStream set to 800x600 true full screen. Perfect playback, even with "news crawlers" on news stations or high bitrate

YPrPb Component output with 1776x1000 resolution, secondary montitor. Snapstream set to fake full screen. Command-line overscan tweaks. Only problem is that you need to switch your primary monitor temporarily to the Component output to get SnapStream to display in the second monitor. Perfect playback.
========================
System #3
Hauppauge MediaMVP
SVideo connection to Televison

Perfect MPEG playback on wired-lan (100Mbps)
Perfect MPEG playback on wireless-lan Wireless-G (54Mbps), when wireless lan is working.

Interface not as nice as SnapStream.
Formats other than MPEG-2 not supported.
Wireless lan encryption must be turned off.