In Da House

**aud19** · 19 January 2004, 15:34 Monday

Congrats on the purchases

:P I too am a dedicated AMD fan :T

MSI seems to be the one people prefer if you're getting a seperate card. (ATI AIW's for the one card solution.) I'd love to hear your thoughts on it's DVR capabilities and any other thoughts after you've got it going for a while.

As you know from my thread, I'm building the machine for my friend next month or so. It's got me seriously considering building one for myself in the next year or so. My biggest concerns so far are:

1-The case. I want basically a standard size ATX case turned on it's side. All the desktop models I've seen seem to only be big enough for micro ATX boards and don't have large enough spaces for big (ie:slow) fans and can't handle as many components (boards, hard drives etc.)

2-Playing nice with my cable providers STB. I currently have a digital cable box with plans to upgrade to a HD STB at some point in the future. There seems to be no simple approach to getting them to play together in a user-friendly manner. Ideally the cable companies would have a "plug-in" chip that you could connect to co-operating video card manufacturer's cards to utilize your computer as the box but..... good luck with that.. :?

Other than that, I think the noise concerns would mostly be addressed if I can figure out a solution for #1...

Jason

Need a new display? Questions about new display technologies? Visit RPTVs, plasmas, and other monitors @ HTguide

**Gordon Moore** · 19 January 2004, 15:57 Monday

Well even on the not so great to "only okay" WinDVR bundled software....I'll tell you my initial impression of TimeShifting is that it's the greatest thing since sliced bread :T

TV in the desktop (your whole desktop becomes the current tvshow) is a neat-o feature to wow your friends but not very practical.

I'll post a screenshot or two when time permits.

"A RONSTER!"

**aud19** · 19 January 2004, 16:23 Monday

I assume you just have a straight cable feed to your PC, no satellite or cable box to contend with...?

Jason

Need a new display? Questions about new display technologies? Visit RPTVs, plasmas, and other monitors @ HTguide

**Gordon Moore** · 19 January 2004, 18:33 Monday

No, no digital cable box or Sat feed.

I don't see how the tuner would be of any use (or any of the PVR capabilities)...There's probably a way but I'm not sure exactly how...you may need a different card?

Mind you, you could just use the capture portion of things and s-vid into the card and use the external boxes for channel changing. Everything else would function the same I imagine. For use as a high end scaler for cheap

"A RONSTER!"

**aud19** · 19 January 2004, 21:17 Monday

There are ways. There are apparently a few (and I emphasize few) STB's that have serial ports that some folks have had luck connecting to their PC's and hence controling the STB that way. You can also try IR blasters. But IMO neither of those options (if they work at all) are user friendly. Plus the HD STB that my cable company offers does scaling for the analog channels to your preffered setting and the digital HD channels to your preffered setting (ie: 720p, 1080i etc). I would imagine a HTPC could probably scale better but it would likely only be a small improvement for a fairly substantial cost...

Without a way to: record digital, compressed HD from a STB, have (user friendly) PVR capabilities from a STB and with the HD STB already doing scaling, it'g getting harder to justify a HTPC :cry:

Jason

Need a new display? Questions about new display technologies? Visit RPTVs, plasmas, and other monitors @ HTguide

In Da House

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