Anyone having success with a slower CPU?

[Cornboy]

I would love to turn my old PC into a PVR. The documented system requirments for BTV call for at least a 600mhz CPU. My old PC has an AMD K6-2 500mhz CPU with 256 megs of RAM. If I get the Haupauge PVR-250 with hardware encoding, am I gonna get by? Anyone have experience with a similar setup?

Thanks in advance

[Brett]

Recording should be fine by upgrading to the PVR250. So if you set it up as a server with no console you should be fine. Playback from that machine might not do as well, it would also depend on the graphics card, but I suspect you would want a better setup.

-Brett

[Cornboy]

Thanks, my plan would be to use the old PC to record only, and view programs on other computers and my Prismiq.

[Terminal]

Check out my sig. Well all I can say is my system only uses about 5% CPU to record with the PVR 250. It hits about 35 to 45% during playback. I think if you just wanted to record with it, you should have no problem. Maybe with the right video card you could use it for playback, but it might be a bit much for MPEG. VHS quality WMV files I would think would be no problem.

[donnieSoprano]

hey cornboy. i'm running BTV on a p2-400 with 384mb ram (i suspect that i could knock that down to 256, but what am i going to use a 128mb stick of pc100 for anyway?). my hd is 7200rpm, so i'm sure that helps some, and my video card is ati aiw 128 agp (about 5 years old). the box is a dedicated pvr that i use for recording, playback, and live tv. performance was lacking at best before i picked up the pvr-250, but since then, i can't tell the difference between it and my tivo (which i'm now looking to pawn off on ebay.) i've been running this setup for about 2 weeks with no problems at all, and will be purchasing btv as soon as the trial runs out and i reformat the system for permanent placement next to my tv.

some tips i used to get mine running great:
- use the newest drivers for the pvr-250 on the web
- perform the registry hack (may or may not work for everyone) to turn on hardware assisted decoding on my ati card (video playback & live tv were VERY jerky before doing this, now it's smooth as can be)
- removed all unnecessary software from startup (won't be an issue when i reformat the system)

i'm in the market for a p2-500 chip (the fastest that my board will take) to see if i can get rid of an intermittent jitter when pulling up the OSD's, but the way it is now is neither bothersome or in the way.


ds