Recommedations wanted for basic yet custom media center PC with...

[chulew]

I want to build a PC to play CD and DVD ISOs from one or more 1TB or greater drives in USB sata docks.

It would be great to choose burn ISOs from the remote control but somehow I think I'm asking too much.

Can you setup a RAID system or equivalent with two USB drives? I want to be safe.

I don't care about HD.

Yellow, white, red composite out is all I need.

I would like to have timer recording for composite in.

I would ultimately like to sync a directory of ISOs on this PC with a remote host and also stream or otherwise play an ISO anywhere I am, provided I have the bandwidth.

What would minimum system requirements be for something simple yet custom like this? Any suggestions for solutions to any part or all of the above?

[dj4monie]

Why would burning ISO's from your Lounge Chair be asking too much? Windows Media Center for obvious reasons won't let you burn movies located in your Movies Folder. But if you put your ISO's into your Video Library then sure you can burn DVD's at the push of a button...

I think My Movies might allow it as well.

Most chipsets support most RAID setups. Of course you can have Windows automatically back up to USB as often as you see fit. If you want RAID, if you got a Mini Tower you can put all your drives (4) in RAID.

Sorry but HD is standard unless you get your TV via Cable or Sat, then your forced to use S-Video as your best input.

I hope your not like my mother and feels HD is not necessary, if your not a sports watcher or action movie/tv watcher umm I guess you won't mind composite video...

With that being said, like I said most cards have composite outputs/s-video outputs. However HDMI does simplify connections to LCD and Plasma TV's.

Get a AMD based motherboard with a 780G or 790GX chipset. This chipset will do HD (Not that you care) but where you MIGHT care is it will accelerate BluRay movies as well. Pair that with a 65w Dual Core CPU, 4GB of RAM and run Windows 7.

Get a simple TV Wonder 600 PCI-E card and your done

Run Windows 7 because its just worth it, its super stable and Media Center looks great...

Easy to setup as well.

You should be able to build this PC with Operating System, Motherboard, Memory, CPU and Hard Drives for far less than $500

C'mon join us in the 21st Century, Target has a 32" LCD for $350

[ocgw]

@ dj4monie

I like all your advice you gave chulew, but I must say I started out using ATI TV tuner cards and have always found the drivers to be buggy, I switched to Hauppauge for my TV tuners and have found them much easier to install, and more stable

ocgw

peace

[chulew]

Would this be barebones technologically speaking? I really don't care about HD or LCD/plasma. It's all about functionality and cost. I really am like your mom I guess. What do you mean about accelerate BluRay? Play them? I'd be happy with being able to play a BluRay disc on my analog 4:3 TV but I've never had to/needed to yet so I'll settle with even less technology for now. Thanks for all the good info though!

I might check out Windows 7 but only if it has features that I need that I can't find in XP (haven't used Vista yet).

I can't get more basic and less expensive to do what I wanted?

[dj4monie]

@ dj4monie

I like all your advice you gave chulew, but I must say I started out using ATI TV tuner cards and have always found the drivers to be buggy, I switched to Hauppauge for my TV tuners and have found them much easier to install, and more stable

ocgw

peace

No longer buggy, still has best video quality. Other than the image being a bit soft on my Gateway 24" monitor because of all the digital filters on ATI hardware -

SDTV - Good
HDTV - Excellent!
Video HD (H.264, VC-1, Divx/Xvid HD) - Excellent!

I had a tiny problem with my HD4670 video card and Vista, I was getting a BSOD every so often, but since I put on Win7 not ONE BSOD or CRASH, period and no errors either... Wow stable Windows first time out, who would have thunk it???

[dj4monie]

Would this be barebones technologically speaking? I really don't care about HD or LCD/plasma. It's all about functionality and cost. I really am like your mom I guess. What do you mean about accelerate BluRay? Play them? I'd be happy with being able to play a BluRay disc on my analog 4:3 TV but I've never had to/needed to yet so I'll settle with even less technology for now. Thanks for all the good info though!

I might check out Windows 7 but only if it has features that I need that I can't find in XP (haven't used Vista yet).

I can't get more basic and less expensive to do what I wanted?

All I can say is watch Planet Earth in HD and tell me if you feel the same about HD over SD. You'll need hardware acceleration for that, so you need at least the AMD SB700 Northbridge (780G) chipset.

Function and Cost?

The only thing easier to use than Media Center would be your standard DVR available from any of the Sat providers or Cable providers. But I would honestly argue after using Direct TV's latest HD-PVR, Media Center is MUCH EASIER TO USE!

In fact with the Vista Media Center Remote there Direct Buttons for My Videos and Movies, along with the usual Recorded TV, Guide, Live TV and DVD Menu buttons.

XP Media Center is OUTDATED, really if your holding on claiming stable operating system, its hogwash. Vista was basically trouble free after SP1, Win7 RC is stable period. The latest updated even fixed most of my issues with my HD tuner card. Since the digital switchover the channels got scrambled and MS didn't update the XML file, which is how Media Center tunes to the right channel.

Basic Barebones?

I don't think you can get much cheaper than this -

Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3 - $64.99 after rebate
AMD Athlon II X2 2.8Ghz - $60

That's all you need to watch anything currently available that's HD, including Blu Ray movies.

Win7 has low resources demands, meaning with a 32-bit build you only need 1GB of memory. I have 2GB of memory and its faster than Vista which by all accounts is a resource hog.

Blu Ray on 4:3? Waste of time, you won't see the LARGE difference in Video Quality, the resolution just isn't high enough.

You haven't seen any videos of Windows 7 in action???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8NfAD_1K6E

Watch in HD.... See the difference?

[ocgw]

@ dj4monie

I like all your advice you gave chulew, but I must say I started out using ATI TV tuner cards and have always found the drivers to be buggy, I switched to Hauppauge for my TV tuners and have found them much easier to install, and more stable

ocgw

peace

No longer buggy, still has best video quality. Other than the image being a bit soft on my Gateway 24" monitor because of all the digital filters on ATI hardware -

SDTV - Good
HDTV - Excellent!
Video HD (H.264, VC-1, Divx/Xvid HD) - Excellent!

I had a tiny problem with my HD4670 video card and Vista, I was getting a BSOD every so often, but since I put on Win7 not ONE BSOD or CRASH, period and no errors either... Wow stable Windows first time out, who would have thunk it???

Yep, ATI HDTV Wonder had some awesome video quality

ocgw

peace

[chulew]

Any reason to avoid ATI 8500? I think I just read that there is no driver for Windows 7 (although I still plan to us XP for now).

[ocgw]

Any reason to avoid ATI 8500? I think I just read that there is no driver for Windows 7 (although I still plan to us XP for now).

You can dual boot XP w/ Win 7, I don't think "XP Mode" will support that hardware

ocgw

peace