This has been a long standing idea that I've finally got in gear over. I very rarely watch subscription channels but really like BBC HD. I decided to build a Windows 7 TV Server and watch it through my Xbox. Popped out yesterday and lashed £250 on:
Pentium D E5200 (basically a c2duo with slightly less cache)
Gigabyte GeForce 7100/630 MicroATX motherboard
XFX GeForce 9600GT
2GB Kingston RAM
Qube case
I'm using an old Sony DVD-RW and 80gb PATA HDD I had lying around for the time being. Tuners are a Hauppauge WinTV DVB Stick and a Nova HD-S2. I'll be adding another DVB Stick at some point.
Thoughts:
- God these 775 coolers are horrible to install. There's a nasty bow in the board that looks horrible, but I swear I'm doing it right!
- Damn. No 6-pin power connector for the graphics card. Running with on board for the time being which is fine apart from HD content.
- I did want a board with a 9300 but there were non in. I was persuaded by the seller that the motherboard would work with GeForce Boost/Hybrid SLA and the 9600 would run through the on-board HDMI connector. I can't try this yet, but there's no mention in the MB manual and I think he might have been wrong.
- The system's a lot quieter than I thought it would be.
- My word the GUI for Media Center on Win7 is sexy.
- I need to sit here and manually 'merge' the DVB-S and DVB-T channels using the 10-foot interface for MCE. This will Take Some Time.
- Not sure if the PATA hard drive is a bottleneck. MCE seems to become rather unresponsive when things are recording.
OK, there's no premium content, but the usability is excellent and oh the shinyness!
I'll post up again as I progress, or if anyone has any questions.