I've got an idea, but I need your help...

Shiminay

Hi all...

My idea - fire together a cheap-ass pc that'll sit under the telly and function as a DVD/MP3 player. Not a bad idea I think, and should be fun for the laugh to see how well it works.

I know I need the following:

• DVD Drive
• Video Card with TV-Out (I've got this)
• Mobo that'll support my AGP card
• Whatever processor (would something Celeronish do?)
• Whatever RAM (I'm sure 64ish should be more than enough)
• Power Supply (have this)
• A Hard Disk for the OS and any MP3/DivX (I've got this too)
• Desktop case seems more logical (and I've got one of those too)

So, I need advice on minimum spec RAM/Processor and a mo-bo that'll tie it all together.

Thanks in advance!

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All the best,

Dav
@B^)

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Blade

I was gonna do something like that too, why not use an ABIT board and a 566 celery clocked to 850, should pick them up fairly cheap now, RAM's cheap too. Also I'm gonna stick in network cards and hook it up to my PC here in another room, so I can just copy MP3's etc. accross.

Another thing I was thinking though Dav is that you don't really need a second PC under your telly at all, cause you can only be in 1 room at a time so I might just run a load of cables out from this PC into the HI-FI in the main room and setup an IR transmitter, only thing is the video out leads maybe can only be upto a certain lenght, I dunno, but I could RF it out or use a video sender from here into the next room anyway.

Shiminay

Aye - not a bad idea that Lors...

I had the Network Card idea too (cause I've a spare 100meg card and plenty of room on the hub).

I'm not sure I want cable all over the house (well, MORE cable I mean ) so I think a stand alone jobby would be my preferrence. As for IR stuff - WAAAGH!!!

Where's a good place to look for the mo-bo and celery? I'm looking around OverClockers and Scan and I'm not seeing much to attract me...

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All the best,

Dav
@B^)

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_CreeD_

There's a wireless product available for doing just this from your PC. you hook it up, connect the receiver to your TV, it even has a remote for you to operate the software from your sitting room.
The catch? I read about it last year so You'll have to go searching yourself....

If you still want to go with the PC option a PII/Celeron at 300Mhz+ will do the job for just about any software player.

Hecate

I got a bare bones system from maplin a little while back and slapped a k6-2 500 in it, a stick of 64meg pc100 and a spare 8gig hd. Also fitted an ensoniq wavetable card i had lying around in it (damn fine card even though its over 3 years old).

I put Linux mandrake on and copied all my mp3s across and hooked it up to my stereo through the aux jack. It works really really well and I hope to network to the other two machines in the house and use it as a file server (amongst other things).

the whole thing worked out at about £250. Cheap alternative to an expensive home entertainment system, although it doesnt look as flashy

yossarin

can you get a Tv inout into that card ?

you could do a nifty custom multichanel dealie - or impose soem sort of random channel change for when you're just too tired to surf with the remote.

that'd be rockin

lphchild

I got a video sender from x10.com for this -tis a dream -until you turn on a microwave nearby ...

lph

Gerry

the video sender is good, but I think a cheap standalone unit like what kharn is suggesting is the better idea. Mainly because you want it to be standalone, and not having to dedictate your pc to play dvd's, and/or mp3's if someone is trying to work on it, or if you want to work on it and someone wants to play a dvd. Theres two ways of going about it:

software dvd:
for PERFECT playback you need a p3/celeron 600 at least. It varies with the drive and the player software how powerful a cpu is needed, so to be absolutely certain you would never get a slowdown, a celeron 850 would be the business. A duron would be a good option either, just the amd boards are more finicky with dvd drives. Duron starts at around 750mhz now, and is cheaper than the celeron.

Another way to go is to get hardware dvd. i.e. a dedicated decoder card. You can get kits from creative with the card and drive, or just the card. Theres even a kit with a remote control unit. You could build this into the front of the pc I suppose.

This is more expensive, but with a hardware decoder, you don't need much cpu power at all. I have installed dvd kits into p166 machines, and it works perfectly. So what you spend on the kit, you could probably save on the machine. Either way, you need 64 megs of ram. Any decent motherboard will do, theres no point in spending loads on it.


Just my 2 cents, apologies about the rambling post.

Joe22

yea hardware decoding is the way to go, and if you get a decent decoder you wont need that tv out card which (in my exprience) tend to be more expensive then the dvd decoders
edit btw gerry i havent hear alot about the remote control unit but i heards its radio controled, not to many flooting around for me to get a look at

[This message has been edited by Joe22 (edited 27-04-2001).]

Kali

a radio controlled remote? very odd.
usually (for tv cards anyway) they just have a little black IR receiver that sits on top of the pc and plugs into a serial port.

Joe22

i thought the same, but what i hear was it would be the same type of thing use in those cordless mouses.probably scrapped by now anyway, we will see what it is when they hit the market