I'm wanting to do this as cheaply as possible. We need to do this, but I've been putting it off for a long time.

Currently we have a laptop plugged into the TV and use it to watch things from the computer to the TV.

I have an older desktop that is slow, but stable, and I think would work fine for this project. It's not pretty, but doesn't take up a lot of room.

I'm thinking I need

• A larger HD, 1Tb or so for storage.
  
  
• A TV tuner card, one that gets decent reception.
  
  [*}A remote, doing anything with this thing using a mouse stinks.
  
  
• A decent program that is actually useful for this.
  

What do you guys have?

Any suggestions, sites to check out etc?

What price range am I looking at?

Thanks in advance.

Brad

2 options I can suggest:

If you really want to build a media center PC, buy a Hauppage (WinTV?) tv tuner card, a 500gb hdd, and at least an Athlon XP 3000+ with 2 gb ram (assuming you are going for bottom of the barrel here, since you said cheap), then install MythTV

Option 2? Buy a damn WDTV for $80 (or less, as low as $69 I've seen) and a LaCIE Rikkiki 500gb USB drive for $90 (again, or less, I've seen them for $70) for storage between the PC and WDTV if you have movies, etc on the pc you'd like to watch on TV, and call it a day. Definitely the cheapest option anymore, since the prices of digital video devices have dropped significantly...

quote Originally posted by Xerces_Blackthorne: 2 options I can suggest: If you really want to build a media center PC, buy a Hauppage (WinTV?) tv tuner card, a 500gb hdd, and at least an Athlon XP 3000+ with 2 gb ram (assuming you are going for bottom of the barrel here, since you said cheap), then install MythTV Option 2? Buy a damn WDTV for $80 (or less, as low as $69 I've seen) and a LaCIE Rikkiki 500gb USB drive for $90 (again, or less, I've seen them for $70) for storage between the PC and WDTV if you have movies, etc on the pc you'd like to watch on TV, and call it a day. Definitely the cheapest option anymore, since the prices of digital video devices have dropped significantly...

Option 2 you posted is basically just an external hard drive. It would be a step below what I have now, in my opinion at least.

I don't think I will upgrade the system I want to use too much, unless I missed something it shouldn't need a lot of Ram, or a huge processor to record TV, or stream movies. I'm not looking to do the "look at this system, I must be compensating for something" setup, I just have a need to fill. I would stay with the laptop hooked to the TV if I could hook a tuner to it, but I doubt that will happen.

Brad

quote Originally posted by twofatguys: I would stay with the laptop hooked to the TV if I could hook a tuner to it, but I doubt that will happen. Brad

Have you looked at the HD Homerun tuner?
http://www.silicondust.com/
It sits on your network and serves as a tuner to any machine. I use one and it works great.

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I can hook you up with some stuff if you want, I have the MS remote control and keyboard set designed for XPMCE- they're infrared so they have a greater range. I also have a new never activated copy of MCE. I'll make you a decent price on the whole setup if you want 'em.

The WDTV is NOT just an external hard drive. It allows you to play youtube, netflix, audio and video files, pandora, and a bunch of other media on your TV.

Depending on how old your PC is, it may not be able to handle high def video and audio. If it can, then I would pretty much do what was already stated. Add a big HDD and install a media center program. I am a fan of XBMC, personally.

http://xbmc.org/


This is what I run on my HTPC, and I can control it from my android phone over wifi from anywhere in my place. It collects information and photos to display with your media and so on automagically. It also has a ton of plugins, so I can watch youtube and netflix and listen to the radio and old radio mysteries and so on straight from XBMC.

I don't even bother with a video capture card, I get it all from the interwebs. If I want old cartoons I use the cartoon channel plugin and get my laughs on. If I want a western I use that plugin. et cetera. Plus I have almost a terabyte of movies and music and TV shows as well. XBMC make it extremely easy to access it all.

i use one of these for a tuner...
http://compare.ebay.com/lik...ceItemTypes&var=sbar

cablecard tuner, most cable channels are scrambled now w/o a box/cablecard system....

that lets me get 90% of the channels, there are a few i still dont get tho, but compared to the normal digital cable tuner that only got like 15.... i much prefer hundreds over 15...

You want cheap and easy the wd tv is great!! If you go Qin a pc based system.. As has been said your Old pc may not be able to handle hd tv or encoding on the fly from a turner card. But XBMC is the BEST home theatre software on the planet!! And it is free!

Look for a tuner card that does encoding on the chip. It will cost more if you can find one. But they are more forgiving of slow pcs.

on my media PC, I added a 2nd smaller display. very handy for being able to use the PC while watching stuff fullscreen on the main display. you can also watch 2 things at once. another good thing is huge storage & fast drives for video/DVR.
you actually dont need a whole lot of CPU power. a decent video card is all you need as well - doesnt have to be "top of the line". doesnt take a whole lot of video power to make a HD picture.

I would also suggest you look at the WDTV if you want to go cheap. I dont own one but have been looking into them. They can basically play any video format that a computer can play, and also music files. It is basically like a dvd player, except no discs, has a little remote too lol. Just hook up your external hard drive, where you would store all your video and music files, and pictures too and can just watch them on your tv.

Right now I have a divx dvd player with usb 2 and have a WD 2TB external hard drive. This dvd player can only play divx/xvid files. So any video file, like lets say an mkv, I would have to then convert it to avi=divx/xvid so that my dvd player can recognise it and play it. Right now I have about 500GB worth of, movies, tv shows, anime, cartoons, on it. This would even be a cheaper way to go, as the dvd player only cost me about $70 back when i bought it a while back, the WD 2TB external hard drive was about $120 at walmart.

If you have Windows 7 Home Premium or Vista Home Premium, then you have Windows Media Center already which is a easy to use interface.

I would recommend the Hauppauge 2250 Dual TV Tuner card. It sells for about $110-125 but it is well worth it. With two tuners in it, you can record one show while watching another, or record two shows simultaneously. It also comes with a Windows Media Center remote control and receiver. I have two of these tuner cards in my HTPC so I can record all of the new shows during the fall lineup. There have been some nights when all four tuners were recording at the same time.

Also, another thing to keep in mind while buying TV tuners is that most TV tuners do not allow multiple cards to work together. Hauppauge cards do work together but most other manufacturer cards do not. If you plan on ever upgrading to multiple tuners in the future, then make sure you get a card that allows you to add another later.

If you are buying a new hard drive, get a 2 TB drive. You can get them on sale for $70 now which is a great price per TB ratio. Once you start recording, you will find that HD programming fills up your hard drive quickly. 2 TB sounds like a lot but I filled 3.5 TB of hard drive space recording the entire season of a few of my favorite shows last year.

Be sure that you have a decent video card. Just about any card that is over $80 should be good for HDTV viewing. I would not trust a cheap card to keep up with the decoding.

Get a Blue-Ray drive when you can. They are perfect for HTPCs. But make sure that any drive that you buys comes with Blue-Ray player software. A lot of them are bare drives and the software bought separately is expensive.

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