Back to building multimedia PCs

April 20, 2003 - 9:39pm — bmann

This time with Windows. First off, go and read Part I and Part II of "Building a Home Theater PC" at ExtremeTech.

So, we're done, right? Well, I had some interesting ideas while talking to Dave about this. What about making this your one and only PC? Well, the resolution of a TV isn't good enough to really work with the Windows desktop, and using just a large-ish flat panel screen (say a $1200 19" one) is still lots smaller than a 32" TV for watching movies.

How about 2 monitors? This is my big idea. Attach the TV out to your TV. Now, get a long VGA cable, potentially with booster or some such to prevent signal degradation (I don't know enough about this right now to speak to this -- I'll do some research). Connect that to wherever your "desk" is going to be. You did get a wireless, RF keyboard and mouse, right? Carry those between your "desk" and your living room, and you've got the best of both worlds. Might take a hefty CPU to be able to handle MS Word on the desk and "Attack of the Clones" in the living room....

I might just be able to do this with my current PC. The motherboard can handle Athlons, and it definitely needs an upgrade from the current 1GHz Duron. Also, it has a GeForce2MX that would get replaced with an AIW card. Well...I don't have cable right now, and the GeForce does have TV out, so I could even stick with that. Hmmm.

What about the other way? i.e. desktop with cables to TV? I think more cables over more distance. This bears thinking about!

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April 25, 2003 - 8:34pm — GSoo

Mini-Box

Mini-Box M-100

April 24, 2003 - 9:31am — gfair

Massive drops in Athlon XP chips.

I've noticed that in the past few weeks there have been massive Athlon price drops on the fastest chips in the wake of the Opteron introduction. There's no better time to buy an AMD-based nForce2 system than now. I'm amazed at how strong the nForce2 A7N8X mobo from Asus has been able to stand up to the competition - it is still the fastest mobo compared to the best DDR400 board Via can produce. The funniest thing - DDR333 RAM systems outperform DDR400 for the Via, and for some tests on the Asus mobo.

Very tempting.

April 24, 2003 - 10:42am — GSoo

I use rules of thumb

completely empirical & intuitional and not verified by testing:
- 1GHz/256MB (+64MB on vidcard) for each 1280x1024 raster of video
- 200MHz/64MB for each additional service you want active
- RAID is a must for multiservice hosts
- 2GHz/512MB for DVD ripping

April 20, 2003 - 10:50pm — GSoo

There's been threads on /.

about Rabid TiVo Fanaticism, from an NYT article.
More user stories.

April 20, 2003 - 10:29pm — GSoo

this site

has far more extensive information.
As for two monitors with GeForce2, I tried that in fall/2001 but was unable to find a way to show a video full-screen on the TV output used as the 2nd monitor.
Without a really fast DVD drive, a 1GHz Duron will have glitches playing back a DVD at full-screen (1024x768) 32-bit color 30fps. Video at 16-bit color depth totally sucks.

April 20, 2003 - 10:40pm — smithdm3

I did the two monitor thing for a while

but it required me switching between resolutions all the time because playing a dvd required 800x600 or something and i used higher on my pc.... and my video card didn't handle outputing at two different resolutions. Maybe I missed something, but my experience was kind of crappy... .I'd really enjoy it if my PS2 had TiVo software, coax input, a couple of tuners and a harddrive... :)

April 20, 2003 - 10:46pm — GSoo