See, that's what I'm trying to avoid, Benots. The iLo doesn't even seem to "render". It's just "writing".
Quiet is not something I worry about. We specialize in "quiet". ;-) But I'll keep the water cooling in mind. Also, I've got my eye on some awesome MicroATX cases that will look... Awesome... ;-)
That Pentium D 4.1Ghz is... Amazing... I wish it was 64-bit... I think that's my target right now, 64-bit.
Keep posting!
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You are of course entitled to your own opinion, but I have gone thru 7 tuner cards, and the all-in-wonder was by far the best (hauppage wasn't bad tho)
And ATi Multimedia Centre blows everything else away.. I have trouble believing you actually tried it.
All-In-Wonder doesn't work with Myth, just so y'all know. The TV-Wonder cards do, but not All-In-Wonder. (Which is what I currently have. It's an old card, sitting in the junk box, but still...)
As Reese says, everyone's intitled his opinion, so keep the opinions coming!
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Shuttle XPC
2.4 ghz P4, 512mb ram
300gb IDE HDD
NEC 3506a (I think) DVD burner
MCE2005
Cheap-o IR KB with trackmouse built in.
Happaggue PVR-250 (sometime a PITA in the onset, but has been stable for 6 months now)
ATI Raedon 9000
Builtin Wi-FI (upgraded to USB Dlink G Wi-FI for WPA encryption)
I haven't upgraded in over a year and a half when I built this and it still runs pretty well!
ATI - All in one Wonder has the worlds crappist tunner. Go with a video capture card and use a VCR or cable box as a tuner.
QUOTE]
i agree 110%!
i currently using Ati all in wonder 2006 PCIe, the pictures is not clear at all! it' has so many snows on screen! I thinking of getting ATI (standalone) tuner 550 a try (well, i have heard good reviews on it..)
Athlon 64s run pretty cool compared to P4s. (But you can't beat a Pentium M or Turion 64 for low heat.) And of course, use Linux as the OS. For TV, use a pcHDTV. http://pchdtv.com/
The easiest way to make the PC quiet is to move it to where it can't be heard. Liquid cooling or phase change with a remote condensing unit can also reduce noise, but is harder to set up.
Quote:
amd athlon 64 gives you overhead for when windows xp vista MCE comes out
dual ATI video card in crossfire gives you more speed
I wouldn't put AMD 64 and ATi in the same box. I don't know if it's still the case, but ATi's 64 bit drivers are said to be terrible. NVidia's 64 bit drivers, however, are excellent in my experience. Multiple video cards are overkill for the average media PC anyways.
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Originally Posted by A friend of mine who has a Linux kernel named after his girlfriend.
If I was VirtualBox, I could load my virtualization module into Hannah and boot up another kernel in the same address space.
I found that you did not have to render if you do not burn a DVD, record to mem and playback was not a problem. But even recording in DVD format required rendering if buring to DVD. That was painful.
The ATI all in wonder (7900 I think) was awful for gaming and there was so much noise in the picture that most channels were not watchable, and I have very good cable service. The noise burst when changing channels made me cringe. My wife kept running in the room demanding I turn it down and asking what the hell I was doing,,,, er changing channels.
I finally pitched the whole thing and bought a Panasonic DVR for $300.
Just curious, what will you do with it once you get this Juggernaught of a PC going?
Err... Watch and record TV? ;-) I'd love to stream NASA TV and things like In2TV@AOL, and other such stuff. Also, I have all my digital photos on my desktop, so I'd love to access those over the network and display them. I'd love to end up with something like a "TiVo". The iLo can record things, and let you watch them as well. Allowing all the features like pausing live tv, and such. Great stuff. Biggest problem with the iLo is that it coasters so many DVDR and DVDRWs. Not fun.
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ATI - All in one Wonder has the worlds crappist tunner.
Quote:
The ATI all in wonder (7900 I think) was awful for gaming and there was so much noise in the picture that most channels were not watchable, and I have very good cable service. The noise burst when changing channels made me cringe. My wife kept running in the room demanding I turn it down and asking what the hell I was doing,,,, er changing channels.
It's not the tuner (which merely downconverts and conditions the incoming signal to be digitized and decoded into a bitstream - very simple in design)- it's the DSP. While good standalone cards have their own DSP chip (and bad standalone cards use the CPU), the AIWs use the GPU as a DSP. The 7xxx series was slow so it made a bad DSP. The 9000 I have gets good quality, but graphics slow down a lot whenever the TV decoder is active. In fact, it slowed down so much that even dragging a window resulted in very noticeable lag. However, since almost all the data processing is done on the AIW card itself, the CPU usage is very, very low. In contrast, my Dell HDTV adapter (with onboard DSP) uses about 20% CPU on my Athlon 64 to demux and do some MPEG decoding (accelerated with a nVidia video card).
Avoid the cheap cards without onboard DSPs, since they use lots of CPU and are unreliable (I once bought two cheap cards and returned them the next day because even a 2.8GHz Prescott couldn't handle the software DSP). (On a side note, cards with FM usually use the CPU for decoding FM, even if there's a DSP onboard. That's because it's much easier to write FM decoding code for a common CPU rather than a specialized DSP. FM decoding also uses very little CPU so it's not an issue.)
And also make sure the DSP is not running too hot - a hot DSP drops packets like crazy. If you can hold your finger on the DSP for at least 5 seconds while it's operating, it's fine. I was able to considerably improve the performance of my Dell HDTV adapter by installing a heatsink. Before, the DSP would be painful to touch for even a second, but once the heatsink is installed, it's barely warm.
A signal amp can help reduce the bit error rate, but it really depends on the situation. In some cases, a signal that's too strong will clip and cause lots of errors. Use the signal strength meter (if there is one) to optimize the signal.
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Originally Posted by A friend of mine who has a Linux kernel named after his girlfriend.
If I was VirtualBox, I could load my virtualization module into Hannah and boot up another kernel in the same address space.
Would a separate Tuner/dsp and video card be a better solution? The outboard tuner/frame grabber looks interesting. I would rather have an Nvida over ATI video card for several reasons.
Any thoughts on the display. I'm thinking DLP projector. I have an 8X10 foot wall that screams home theater.
And of coarse a presentation cable for my axim to drive the whole mess..
Athlon 64s run pretty cool compared to P4s. (But you can't beat a Pentium M or Turion 64 for low heat.) And of course, use Linux as the OS. For TV, use a pcHDTV. http://pchdtv.com/
The easiest way to make the PC quiet is to move it to where it can't be heard. Liquid cooling or phase change with a remote condensing unit can also reduce noise, but is harder to set up.
I wouldn't put AMD 64 and ATi in the same box. I don't know if it's still the case, but ATi's 64 bit drivers are said to be terrible. NVidia's 64 bit drivers, however, are excellent in my experience. Multiple video cards are overkill for the average media PC anyways.
If you want to go quiet, do not put a big hot processor in the machine. Get a slightly slower, cooler processor (like a 3ghz P4 or comparable AMD) so that you do not need the extra noise from fans.
Look at reviews and you can find quiet components easily. The coolermaster realpower PSUs are very quiet in my experience.
Also, you can find good home theatre cases and newegg.com, they have a bunch of them.
ATI all in wonder tuners are not crap, they are very good and much better than about 95% of the tuners out there. There are some avermedia and hauppage ones that are better though. I would not recommend using a video capture card with an external tuner (like a vcr) as many times video capture cards and cheap and do not provide good quality. Also, you may have an older AIW and that is why it is not working with Myth (not 100% sure though).
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