Hey guys, Media centre PCs/HTPCs are not my strong point. I do not understand all the different codecs for video/audio and don't know what tuners are good and all that jargon so I am looking for a poke in the right direction. Basically I want to build a little PC that I can leave on pretty much all the time when I am at home and that will take the job of my current freeview box. All I really want it to do is watch and record freeview. Not really bothered about getting it to record one channel while I am watching another, but it would be nice I guess. I also want to watch some films and TV I have on on my system, they run fine on my eee 1000h, so I guess they aren't of concern for another similar atom. I am not after super HD uber awesome looking TV, just something on par with my current basic phillips freeview box (DTR220/05, if it matters). It will be going into my TV (and second monitor) which at the minute is a samsung 2032mw. So what do I need? Ram: 1 or 2gb? CPU: will an atom be enough, will I need a dual core one? GPU: Ideally don't want to buy a gpu unless I have to. Or would one of the ION based atom boards be better than the intel chip ones? I don't want to buy an ION board because "its better" I only want to buy what I need. HDD: Something big, doesn't have to be fast. I guess quiet and low power is more important. Case/psu: I was looking at some miniITX cases, but am also thinking of building an acrylic cube instead to get some better cooling. Tuner: Now this is the big one, I have no idea about what make is good, what type of tuner I need to receive freeview or anything like that. Remote: I have seen some, but no idea what is good. OS: was thinking of mythbuntu/tv. Or I have a ton of vista licences if its easier, mostly business ones though, so no idea about MC on those. Any input is greatly appreciated, and hopefully if I do decide to build the case myself, I will have a nice project log to go with it. Thanks in advance guys and gals.
Just so I don't put people off reading an already large post. I will make another post. This seems to fit the bill pretty nicely. http://www.ebuyer.com/product/165390# Power supply built in seems handy. And a mini PCIe slot, I don't know how many tuners are available in that form. So usb would be the way? And again, do I need the dual core?
Seeing as there are dual core atom itx boards for around 60 upwards it would be a odd choice to go for a single core imo.
I'm afraid I can't help much, but if you're recording it might be worth looking at tuner cards which have decoding built in to ease the load on the atom while recording.
I am looking at the ion chipset. I looked at the cheaper dual cores, but I really don't know if the 945 chipset can handle it. That's why I need help, my weak point clearly is the way TV tuners work. I will have a look, do you have any suggestions on brands, hauppauge keeps popping up so I assume they are pretty decent. No offence to anyone here, but I may have to sign up to some sort of av forums to get some answers from experience. Obviously I am thankful to any input from here, I am still holding out for a super htpc man
Some bit-tech reviews of ion media centers, if your interested in 1080p playback then ion would be perfect ASRock Ion nettop Review building an ion(atom) powered linux media center xtreamer network media player media player review the second one on that list should be helpful. Hope those links help.
Thanks for the links. They are of some help, I am now pretty confident they will play the video if it was stored on the system. But I just don't know if the freeview tuner will play nice with it and give me some jump free viewing.
