DescentBB

I have few questions.

In the next month or so I will be building a media center PC, well upgrading my desktop and using my old box as a media center PC.

The Specs will be basically this.

AMD Socket 939 4600+
4 GB of DDR 400 RAM
Probably will have like a Nvidia 9400 or something tossed into it.

For those basic specs I am guessing that will be fine for a media center right?

Also I am sort of clueless in the area of TV tuner cards, any of you have any suggestions? More then likely I will only need to record 1 TV show at a time, so it doesn't need to be anything super fancy, but I don't want to get screwed over in this choice.

Also, back in April I got married, and my wife has a 3 1/2 year old, and she has already ruined one of my Ninja Turtles DVDs, rerelease from the 80's, and I was planning on using something like handbrake or Magic DVD copier or something to rip the DVDs so we don't ruin any more DVDs. I dont care if the video is super high quality, as long as it works and it doesn't look like crap that is all that matters to me. So what all do you use and suggest?

Should be enough.

The problem with TV tuner cards usually shows up if you want to record encrypted channels with them. You need a special kind of tuner for those, and they're kind of expensive. Might depend on your cable provider though.

Sirius wrote:Should be enough.

The problem with TV tuner cards usually shows up if you want to record encrypted channels with them. You need a special kind of tuner for those, and they're kind of expensive. Might depend on your cable provider though.

Yeah, don't use a TV tuner card. Instead get a more simple video capture card, they need to be plugged into a cable box or some other tuner source and they use an IR blaster to control it. There are boxes that you can plug into your PC and they can rip the transport streams off of a compatible cable box, pretty much perfect video quality (if rather storage intensive at about 2-4 GB per hour of recorded video).

Just as a comparison, here's my Media Center box, built cheaply from an old Dell:

P4 2.8GHz HT
2Gb RAM
ATI 4350 w/ heatsink (no fan = very quiet)
Blu-Ray / HD-DVD drive
ATI TV Wonder 650 (pci)

Runs Win7 Home Premium, PowerDVD for Blu-Ray/HD-DVD playback.

As to DVR functionality, WMC works perfectly for me. I only need to record occasional shows (rarely more than one at a time).

Sirius is right that many channels are encrypted, but for me almost every channel I'm interested in is broadcast in unencrypted QAM (including HD) from my cable co.

Krom wrote:

Sirius wrote:Should be enough.

The problem with TV tuner cards usually shows up if you want to record encrypted channels with them. You need a special kind of tuner for those, and they're kind of expensive. Might depend on your cable provider though.

Yeah, don't use a TV tuner card. Instead get a more simple video capture card, they need to be plugged into a cable box or some other tuner source and they use an IR blaster to control it. There are boxes that you can plug into your PC and they can rip the transport streams off of a compatible cable box, pretty much perfect video quality (if rather storage intensive at about 2-4 GB per hour of recorded video).

Do you have a few models you can suggest, I have a newegg preferred account so I will be ordering it from there. Currently my choice was. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6815116028

I am assuming because it says TV recorder it should be fine right?

And any suggestions on software to rip DVDs?

AnyDVD, DVDDecrypter, DVDShrink. Note that these are illegal since they can circumvent copy protection, hence no links. You'll have to find them yourself. ImgBurn to burn back images. Check doom9.net .

Double, and didn't know it.

Twinkie,

That looks like a decent card. I like Hauppage.

For a quick channel check before you and buy something: See if your TV can decode QAM, if it can, plug your cable straight into your TV, and see how many HD channels you get. That's what you'll get on the TV card. That's assuming that you have cable. If you don't, like me, your card will get any channel that your TV gets (broadcast isn't encrypted).

If you're not happy with the channel selection, you're kinda stuck. You can use an IR blaster on your cable box (an IR blaster acts like a remote, controlling your cable box via the infrared- thus the computer has means to control the cable box and set the channels) - The downside is that the cable box will probably only output in HD via HDMI, and HDMI-in cards for your PC are hard to come by and either illegal or crap. Thus, you can tap into the analog out of your cable box with the card you linked, but you will be stuck with a low-def picture.

Software:

I use mythtv. It's Linux, but works very well. If you're leaning that way, research compatibility with the card that you're looking to buy, including with the remote. Once you get it set up, you can have it boot directly to mythtv and you can wind up with a lighter-weight solution than windows could give you.

For windows: I tinkered with GB-PVR for a bit, but never really got it going. I've also heard the mediaportal is good. I try to stay away from Microsoft, so I've never given mediacenter a chance. Check software compatibility with the card that you choose.

Encoding/etc. I'm a big proponent of mencoder and ffmpeg. Ffmpeg comes with presets to encode video into a DVD-compatible stream without you having to figure out all of the proper settings. Both are command-line, and both can be used with a variety of frontends that help you get what you really want. Both can read dvd's, given that correct plugins/etc. Mencoder is designed to create .avi's, so I'd stick with ffmpeg to make mpegs. I don't author many dvd's, so I can't weigh in on making disks.

Final thought: You're computer specs look good. The card outputs an mpeg stream, so all your computer really needs to do is save a lot of data. It's very CPU-light. I would make sure that I have a SATA hard drive, though. The old IDE ones might have trouble keeping up. Also, give yourself lots of hard drive space. You pretty much have to save the stream as it is, because encoding on the fly isn't realistic, so you wind up with 2-5GB/hr for HD. It adds up pretty fast if you don't do regular house cleaning. You can also comfigure your software to encode to a smaller format immediately after recording to save on space.

snoopy wrote:For a quick channel check before you and buy something: See if your TV can decode QAM, if it can, plug your cable straight into your TV, and see how many HD channels you get. That's what you'll get on the TV card.

That's a good idea; it's what I did (I think someone here suggested it when I was shopping for a tuner card). As I recall, I think I had to switch the TV over to some "digital" setting to get the QAM channels.

snoopy wrote:For windows: I tinkered with GB-PVR for a bit, but never really got it going.

<Nod> I tried it as well, got it working at one point, but it was really too much hassle.

snoopy wrote:I try to stay away from Microsoft, so I've never given mediacenter a chance.

My experience with the MS software: Vista WMC is so-so (and has limited QAM support), but Win7 WMC was *great*! It worked right 'out of the box' and has performed beautifully for me for over a year now.

Well that is one thing that I am sort of stuck right now, me and my wife are moving in about a week, so we are losing our comcast and getting Direct TV, not by choice mind you, its part of the HOA for our condo, and the plans were when we move, place the order for the media center machine parts, well upgrade my machine, and use my parts for the media center. We are also getting a new TV as well. This is what I have selected. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6889104141 we want to stay around the same size screen and stay around the same price, so if you have any suggestions or know of one that for sure works in my config please let me know.

captain_twinkie wrote:...we are losing our comcast and getting Direct TV, not by choice mind you, its part of the HOA for our condo...

I'd double-check the HOA regulations. My condo association is offering DirecTV discounts, but I can (and did) choose to still use cable.

AFAIK, if you have to use DirecTV, that precludes any use of QAM channels we were talking about.

captain_twinkie wrote:We are also getting a new TV as well. This is what I have selected. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6889104141

That should be fine. A couple of suggestions:

If you can do audio-out through a video card with HDMI (e.g. ATI cards with HDMI have RealTek audio chipsets built in), it makes things considerably easier.

When you get it hooked up, adjust your overscan settings (from my experience, when hooking up to a TV, the default overscan setting is a bit high).

Yeah I am pretty sure I can still use comcast, the thing is our HOA is $155 a month which includes DirectTV and Utah Broadband, which is crap internet.

Hauppauge makes pretty nice cards capable of hardware encoding. You might also want to look into the hdhomerun. It can only tune QAM (unencrypted digital) channels, but you plug it into your network and 2 machines can watch/record TV (different channels too) at the same time, or on 1 PC you can record 2 different channels, etc....

Ok, so I have now been in my new condo for about a week and a half now, and I have ran into a dilemma. When I setup everything, first they setup everything with standard deff set top box, which is no biggie to switch to a HD box. Right now the way windows media center see's the Direct TV signal it looks horrible. So in order for me to get HD quality I need the HD set top box or DVR, right now my main concern is more the live tv then the DVR. I just want everything centralized in WMC.

The card I got is this one

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

And here is the pages for their receivers.

http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/content/e ... r_receiver

So right now, unless I am miss reading, I only see that the standard deff box is the only one with Coax out on it.

So I need some suggestions of any adapters I can get to get this to work with the HD reciever.

captain_twinkie wrote:And any suggestions on software to rip DVDs?

If you want to rip DVD's without circumvent copy Protection you could use software like Audials One. If you use the Promo code audialsone8 You can pick it up for $26.86 Works well. I have not tried it on blu-rays yet Getting blu ray player for my machine next paycheck. I like that it records Internet radio and make the songs into singles cuts and IDS them.

I got bad news for you, Twinkie.

There's basically no way that you're going to get an HD signal from the set-top box to your computer. Your best bet is to buy an indoor antenna, and hook it to your tuner card, so it least you have the over-the-air channels in HD. Sorry mate.

Crap, I figured that was the case, guess I am waiting till I can get comcast here, its in the city, just not in all parts of it.

i was actually thinking about doing the same thing. is there any tv tuner cards with hdmi out? i also have a samsung time warner hd cable box.. i wonder if i can plug that into my video card... my video card is an ati hd 5750 1GB with dvi, vhs, and hdmi.

@dwlpunk:

Since you have cable, just get any decent tuner card that does QAM, hook your cable up to it (directly from the wall, not from the cable box), and you'll have all the channels they broadcast in unencrypted QAM.

Try this site to see which channels are available in clear QAM.

Your ATI 5750 HDMI-out will work just fine.

Thanks, im gonna give it a try. And im just gonna try it with an antenna cause in columbus theres like 20 free over the air channels in HD.

If you get a dual tuner card, you can do both.