MCE Recommendations?
Lazy web request :).
I have a friend wanting to build his own Media Center. It’ll have dual OTA tuners and needs to be capable of running Windows Vista. What sort of processor and graphics card does he need to make that happen?
Comments
I have an Athlon 3700+ / ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (AGP) running two OTA tuners (ATI HDTV Wonder, Hauppage HVR-1600) plus the NTSC tuner on the Hauppage card (Vista). It works well — seems to me that the hard disk is the biggest bottleneck. Assuming Media Center is smart enough to use the second drive, I’d use two.
Remember that you can use an Xbox 360 to render the video — so you could buy some really, really cheap graphics card and invest the money in the Xbox if that’s more your style.
if thats it.. get a 939 pin amd 64 processor, 3000 or 3200 should be really cheap right now. mobos I like asus better, nforce4 for this one. maybe the a8n5x which should be around $75. probably can find a $120-150 combo of cpu plus mobo on newegg righ tnow. video you can get a 7600gs for under $100 and works well in vista or an x1600pro. you can get good deals on 250-300 gig satas right. vbox 164e should be a great dual tuner if x86 is the desired version. get 1 gig of value memory but also get a 1g readyboost thumb drive. 2g if they don’t want readyboost.
Thanks Bryan, that’s exactly the kind of answer I was looking for!
Another option would be Silicon Dust HD Homerun for the OTA tuner. It does QAM and ATSC
http://www.silicondust.com/wiki/products/hdhomerun
I haven’t tried the product yet since shipping to canada is a pain :(
Lots of positive feedbacks from thegreenbutton and others
The lazy friend has decided that he wants HDTV capability. Will the machine Bryan put together handle dual HD tuners? or would it be better to go with the homerun tuner?