htpc help

[Modfather]

yo ppl
im building an htpc for my dad, what is the best/really good freeview tv tuner available? and what sort of things would i need to put togethor a multiple tuner system? (besides 2 cards :P)

[six5tring]

probably blackgold/nebulla. blackgold are releasing dual DVB tuner later this year (not too long to wait now :) and nebulla's card's are not currently MCE compatible if you decide to go that route. - six

[Rchiileea]

First four dual tuner setups i reccommend 1 gig min of ram, watching one channel while recording it is ok but watching one channel whill recording another will be taxing on ram (have done some testing and 512 just doesnt cut it tbh) I found with 512 in a dual tuner setup the recorded program can have glitches in it but with 1 gig none.

other stuff is general common sence. it possable to enjoy a full media experiance off a 2500 barton so i would say at least a 2.4 CPU for hassle free operation. i am personly using a 2.4 prescott 478 (well will be when i replace board i trod on).

if no games at all will be played on this depending on mobo get a 9250 256 without vio or if its pci-express get x300 256 non vio. (i say non vio as some mce2005 users seem to be having problems with the low range cards with vio)
(Geforce is ok with vio)

The main thing i would invest in cash wise is the case my fav is the lc14m from silverstone as seeing it in the flesh it is one very nice design. but at a RRP of 180 gbp might be a bit high. but you get full customisable software with the vfd display. can power up via the remote and if setup with mce2005, works with the os so no need for mce remote, also nice power up feature via the remote :)

HDD i would go for a large samsung spinpoint as it is the quietest i believe on the market.

Kustom are a great shop and tbh they stock enough stuff to build quite a few combinations for a htpc from small to that full sized amp look the choice is yours.

P.S give the thread a few days and you will get even more opinions as mine is only one and all tastes differ :D

[Modfather]

cheerz for the opinions... funny you should say it.. thats the case i have picked. the spec so far is...

amd64 3500
a8n sli deluxe
1gb corsair
primary hard drive : 36gb raptor (sata)
Raid 0 : 2x sata 250gb seagate (cant remember model)
gfx: leadtech geforce 6200 (it has component out for his plasma tv)
sound: audigy 2 zs platinum pro (he allready has one)
optical : undecided dvd rw drive

that is the spec so far, still deciding about other things, concentrating on the tuner setup jusnow tho..
keep the opinions and sugestions coming :)

[Rchiileea]

errm this is a htpc setup right so why the raptor you dont need it, or the sli mobo your wasting money!

yep he will love the case

forget the hdds you just mentioned and just get a nice big 400 gig or 2

[Modfather]

errm this is a htpc setup right so why the raptor you dont need it, or the sli mobo your wasting money!

yep he will love the case

forget the hdds you just mentioned and just get a nice big 400 gig or 2

well first of all its not jus getting used as a htpc, it will be used for other general things and a large amount of ripping and encoding, the reason i picked the sli board is cause hewants it to be very upgradeable... which that board is... i dont want a 400gb hard drive because i hear the number of platters in them means there is more mechanical things that can go wrong and from the point of view of the cash.. well it works out cheaper sticking two 250gb drives in raid 0 giving me 500 gig to play with...
not wasting my money :p

[Rchiileea]

well first of all its not jus getting used as a htpc, it will be used for other general things and a large amount of ripping and encoding, the reason i picked the sli board is cause hewants it to be very upgradeable... which that board is... i dont want a 400gb hard drive because i hear the number of platters in them means there is more mechanical things that can go wrong and from the point of view of the cash.. well it works out cheaper sticking two 250gb drives in raid 0 giving me 500 gig to play with...
not wasting my money :p

SLI board and a noisy raptor are a waste, why would the mobo outputing to a plasma need a dual card setup in the future. i can not see the point. and the raptor well noise wise i wouldnt put that any were near a htpc. you are going to be using this for a media pc to listen to sounds movies ect and a noisy hdd spinning in the back ground wont help.

remember this thing is going to be sitting in the living room and loudness is not needed.

[Modfather]

SLI board and a noisy raptor are a waste, why would the mobo outputing to a plasma need a dual card setup in the future. i can not see the point. and the raptor well noise wise i wouldnt put that any were near a htpc. you are going to be using this for a media pc to listen to sounds movies ect and a noisy hdd spinning in the back ground wont help.

remember this thing is going to be sitting in the living room and loudness is not needed.

It aint alwayz gona be a media centre pc, the idea is that when it is no longer needed as a media pc it can be easily changed. The reason im using a raptor is because it is fast. If i get p'd off with the noise i will put noise proofing in the case...
can we please remember that this thread is about what tv tuner (and software) i can use for a dual tuner system

[stdRaichu]

First four dual tuner setups i reccommend 1 gig min of ram, watching one channel while recording it is ok but watching one channel whill recording another will be taxing on ram (have done some testing and 512 just doesnt cut it tbh) I found with 512 in a dual tuner setup the recorded program can have glitches in it but with 1 gig none.

God knows why, since TV tuners use shared memory only for the ring buffer (i.e. the data in between the tuner card and the hard drive), so it's not taxing on RAM at all. I suspect what you really mean is that you need more RAM because everything is bottlenecking on your hard drive I/O. I ran my two Nova-T's in a machine with only 256MB RAM at first, and never noticed any problems.

[Modfather]

kool, 2 q's
1. are nova t's dvb cards??
2. what software did you use?
cheerz 4 ur help :)

[stdRaichu]

All of that is either in my sig or a quick google away :rolleyes:

Yes, Nova-T's are DVB-T cards. Software is MythTV on Gentoo Linux in both x86 and x86-64 flavours.

[Modfather]

this is great, thanks for ur help so far. unfotunetly i cant use linux cause the would confuse the hell out of my dad and he needs to use ms windows apps aswell. what windows based proggys are available that support the 2 tuners?
cheerz

[zealot]

media centre 2005 supports two tuners and work with nova-t as well .