O.K. I'm switching to cable from DirecTV to save money. If I get basic cable then it will only cost me $7 a month, after the dicount I'll get on my internet, as opposed to $50 for DirecTV. The only problem is my TiVo is DireTV only so it won't work on cable. So I am considering building in the near future a HTPC to record the few show that I watch.
I have a few options on this. I could just add a tuner card to my
Media Server, and just access the files with my modded xbox and PC, or build a separate machine. The benefit of building a seperate machine is that I would be able to use mythTV, where as if I use my media server I either have to use media portal or the software that comes with the tuner card. I think that it might be a bit to much of a load on my media server to add a tuner card to it along with all the other stuff that its doing.
If I do build a separate machine then I do have the choice of which HT software and OS that I use. MythTV uses Linux so it would probably run better, but then I need hardware that has Linux drivers, and it would porbably be harder to setup. So no ATI cards. If I use Media Portal then I need a DX9 card, but it does have a Web UI plugin that would be great. Not sure if MythTV has a Web UI or not.
I already have some parts. I figure I can pull the 80GB HDD out of the TiVo and use that. I could use the parts that I was planning on using on my IPCop box, since I was kind of going overkill on that as it was. I was thinking that I could either buy a cheap CPU and Mobo on ebay for my IPCop box. I am also planning on upgrading my Media Server's case, and I could use the old one for the IPCop machine. Its a mid tower case.
The parts that I have for that are:
PC Chips SIS socket A mobo
AMD Geode CPU 1.4GHZ
2X256MB=512MB DDR266 RAM
Sparkle 250W PSU
AMS Micro tower (which will actually fit in my TV stand)
I would just need a tuner card, and a Graphics card with S-Video out
Oh Yeah, My TV is a CRT type, so no HD, or anything like that. I tryed to do something like this before, and had problems with the picture on this type of TV, and its hard to find out which cards have good S-Video outs. For example I tried a XFX 5200, and it had a horrible picture from the S-Video out. I also tried a Saphire radeon 9250, which had a great picture, but I could not get it to cover the whole screen. There was a inch or 2 at the bottom that was just black. It also did not display unless it was in windows, so if I had to do an adjustments in the Bios then I had to pull out my spare monitor.
I have some other parts lying around as well. I have a AMD Athlon XP 2200 with a heat sink, and I have a ASUS A8N SLI 939.
So any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Especially on Graphics cards with good S-Video out and tuner cards.