Hardware Requirements

[othy]

Excuse me for asking a question that should be obvious, but I'm curious about system requirements.

Per Frey's site:
* Minimum 128Mb RAM and a Recommended 256Mb RAM
* Genuine Intel Pentium III 600 MHz or AMD Athlon 600 MHz or faster

And, of course, a TV card (in my case, eventually a PVR-250).

I'm looking at building a new HTPC that will act act as a DVD player and a PVR for DirecTV, so minimum requires shouldn't be an issue here.

If I simply want to serve this data across my network to a dedicated client in my bedroom, what are the system requirements for the client, both in terms of CPU and video or TV cards?

If I decide to use that 2nd machine to record (and/or serve) from my cable feed (cable TV is only wired in that one room, for my internet connection), how does that change the requirements? If I were to go this route eventually, I'm hoping I could record DTV and watch cable at the same time, or even record from both cable and DTV while watching a DVD...

Am I on the right track here?

Thanks,
Tim

[PaulModz]

The requirements are valid, I suspect you could even use a slower machine than Frey suggests if you have a decent video card in the system.

Since you already plan to use the 250, the only other thing you really need to worry about is the video card. For an HTPC, the two things you need in a video card are DVD (MPEG-2) hardware decode and good TV-Out.

The two best options are the GeForce FX cards and some of the ATI Radeon cards. I prefer the ATIs because of their TV-Out, but its really a matter of opinion as to which TV-Out you prefer. I got a brand new ATI 7000 AGP card for $36, and its awesome (20% CPU during playback on a PIII 733, and I suspect most of that is for the audio decode). If you do get the 7000, be sure and get the model with 64MB, its the only one with MPEG2 decode.

Since the Hauppauge 250 does all the encoding in hardware, whether a machine is used to record or not doesn't have much impact on the requirements.

[jmeeks]

The minimum requirements for the CPU and memory stem mostly from satisfactory MPEG2 playback (DVD playback), so your client would need those minimum requirements.

To change it from client to sever or another SageTV PVR, would add on the hard disk requirements for satisfactory playback from the hard disk, both over the network and locally.

The PVR250 card handles the majority of processing requirments while recording. The playback is done in software, which drives the CPU and memory requirements. So recording and watching a DVD should be no problem.

[SHS]

I can take all way to 233 P2 but you need have REAL Hardware Decoder "REALmagic Xcard" or PVR 350 that dose have Hardware decoder.
How ever Xcard dose have problem with DVD disc playback but you can use the Player it come with it works fine just not SageTV and 350 dosen't support DVD disc at all so in a way Soft Play back maybe the only option.
But it going to depand on what you plan to use as Monitor if a PC monitor you need to have Compatible Video card like older ATI or nVidia that has VIP on board when comes to the Xcard TV out not a problem with Xcard.