Cheap Media Centre for HDTV

[Longy]

Thinking about building a small PC for my sammy TV.

Want it to view digital broadcasts - pause live TV, Record TV shows, access music and photo's as well as viewing video files.

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Intel D865GSA Motherboard i865G LGA775 P4/Celeron 5.1 Audio micro ATX
£29.10

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In Win BT553 Black micro ATX desktop/tower case 240W PSU +audio
£27.95
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Sony 16x DVD ROM Black OEM
£11.25
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Hauppauge WinTV PVR 150 MediaCenter TV and FM Tuner with Hardware MPEG2 encoder Composite & S-video capture certified for MCE Single oem
£33.60
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OCZ Value Pro 512Mb DDR2 PC5400 memory 667Mhz +Copper Heatspreader
£14.00
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Intel CPU Core 2 Duo E4300 1.8GHz 800FSB LGA775 2MB cache Retail inc.Fan (3yr Manufacturers Warranty)
£65.40

Total: £213.03

I have a old 160gig HD lying about i could use aswell.

I'm either gonna install MCE on it (or vista) or go linux route with Media centre on it for free.

thoughts?

(source microdirect.co.uk)

 

[16v_jon]

You really should try and factor in a decent hardware based tv decoder such as the Hauppauge nova-t 500 (£55) or the Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT (£75) they offer much better recording and surfing speed and dont use too much cpu power - the hvr 150 is not a freeview card only analogue.
You are also better off getting a standalone graphics card too one that has a DVI slot so you can connect it straight to HDMI

 

[Mike_182]

That and a bit more memory... 512Mb will never suffice for what is essentially a video manipulation machine... If you can stretch, you want 2gb, but 1gb is a minimum. If you're considering Vista then you will certainly need 2gb. I dread to think what my laptop would be like trying to run Media Center on Vista...