Building a PVR PC... on the cheap?

[Hercules]

Okay, so I would probably go with an Athlon 1GHz or something, 256MB ram, onboard video and audio, and the PVR250 Bundle from Sage.

However I have a few questions.... does Sage support Dolby Digital and the other formats, if I ran it thru a reciever to get surround sound? I have a ReplayTV now but would love to ditch it in favor of a unit I can also browse the web on remotely.

Would appreciate any input for this. Thanks!

[stanger89]

Well, nothing can record DD, but yes you can output digital and decode with ProLogic and get surround (DD from DVDs works fine).

[nicktripp]

I was also interested in building a box "on the cheap." I ended up putting just under $500 into the box. That was with one encoder (PVR-250), an NVidia 5200FX, 120GB HD, PIII 600MHz, 384MB of RAM on Windows XP Pro.

I have been extremely happy with the performance and usefulness of this box. I haven't had any problems with it but, now that I've got the HTPC bug, I'm building a much beefier machine with multiple encoders and such.

If you'd like to see my work (in a sparsely documented fashion) on the cheap box, I blogged most of it. (The oldest post will be at the bottom.) You can see that here.

[RenHoek]

A Via Epia-M10000 based PVR's not too 'spensive. Here's what's in mine:

Via Epia M10000 mobo: $160
512 RAM $80
Case (2699) $80
160 GB HD $130
Slim DVD drive $80
100W power supply $55
AC/DC power supply $40
PVR-250 $120
Total: $745

It's only 1 tuner (due to the size of the case), but I was going for the higher WAF that a "looks like a VCR" case provides. Also, the Epia 10K isn't a screamer for any modern gaming, but again that wasn't a requirement for this box. It DOES play MAME games great (even while recording in Sage).

Put this in a normal case, and you could add another tuner for the cost (almost) of the extra Power Supply pieces listed above.

In fact, the only reason I had to upgrade to these over the standard 55W power supply that comes with the Casetronic 2699 case was I was using a 3.5" HD (for capacity) instead of a 2.5" notebook HD. If you're building a Sage Client, the smaller capacity of a 2.5" HD would be fine.

-RenHoek

[tobszanski]

RenHoek,

I'm going to be building a PVR using the the 2699 case as well, along with other purchased and existing parts, my preliminary parts list includes:

Epia EM6000 board
2699 case
512Mb of RAM (existing)
200Gb HD (existing)
PVR-350 (existing)
Slim CD-ROM (existing, from a laptop) which will be used only for initial XP installation, it won't be in the case normally since I still will have to use it in the laptop.

I realize that the existing dc-dc adapter in the 2699 is weak for the components that I'm throwing at it, unless I use a 2.5" drive internally. Unfortunately, this means I would have to use the 200Gig HD as an external device in one of the USB2/Firewire enclosures that I have already, defeating the reason for going with the small 2699.

After a bit of research, I found the PW-70A from mini-box which should do the job, is this the one you used? If so, how is it working out for you. Thanks!

-Tom

[RenHoek]

Hi, Tom-
Yup - that's the one. I got it from iTuner.com. I wasn't sure if I'd need the corresponding AC/DC power supply (http://store.yahoo.com/ituner/ac12v9aswpoa.html), but for $39 I figured it would be cheap insurance. I haven't tried running my box off of the old one since I got the new stuff. It's too bad the case doesn't come with a beefier supply to start with...

The PW70A works fine. I originally thought it was contributing a bunch of EMI noise to my setup, but it turns out that was due to multiple weird aspects to my OTA antenna configuration.

One thing to know about the PW70A is that it's output cables are VERY short - the one for the CD drive is OK in this case, but you'll need an extender or a Y cable for the one that needs to go to your HD. There's also a little 5v output connector on this board that isn't used in most applications.

BTW - Head's up on using your laptop's CD drive - you'll also need an adapter to get it to standard IDE. Something like this:

http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merch...ct_Code=160005

In fact, I just bought a slimline CD drive (Mitsumi SR244W1) for a project at work and it came with the adapter - all for $50:
http://www.essencompu.com/nupplysingar.asp?ID=1989

I'd go that way, if all you're needing is a CD - the adapter by itself is $12-15 or so...might as well leave your laptop alone - you'll want a CD drive in there later. I wanted to be able to play DVD's through this, so I opted for a DVD drive.

Let me know if you have other ?'s about my setup.
-Ren

[tobszanski]

Mini-box and iTuner are the same entities.

Thanks for the heads-up on the short cables on the PW-70A, I already have extender cables that I can use.

Since the CD-ROM drive will be used only for the initial WinXP and driver installation, it will be hooked up for only a few hours - I already knew about the required IDE adapter, then it will find it's way back to the laptop.

[falchulk]

tobszanski, you might have some issues with that 600mhz board. In most respects the m10000 is a bare minimum. Even with Hw acceleration it runs at between 45 to 70% cpu utilization.

[RenHoek]

Yup...I was wondering about that issue, too. My M10K is only about 1-2% busy when Sage is sleeping (and recording), but playback (through its SVIDEO out) while recording bumps up to around 65%.

Still fine -- no dropped frames at all -- but taking it down by another 40% to the M6000 might restrict you to only recording OR playback at once. It'll be interesting - please post your findings!!

OTOH, if it doesn't work out, you can always use the M6K as a client box...

-RenHoek

[tobszanski]

Note that I'm using a PVR-350 with the video output, I won't be playing recorded video through the PC's SVIDEO output. CPU usage should be very low enough, even with the 600Mhz processor.

[nicktripp]

Also note that I said in my post above that I'm using a PIII 600MHz...and it works just fine.

[falchulk]

A pIII 600 and a Via processor running at the same freq are not the same! The m10000 is equvilant to about a PII 450 or 500 in processing power.

[nicktripp]

Sorry. I missed the Via part. My bad.

[tobszanski]

Oh, I definitely know the Via C3 processors aren't speed demons by any stretch of the imagination, easily bested by the lowliest Intel or AMD offerings, however it's enough horsepower when the PVR-350 is doing all of the MPEG encoding and decoding. This isn't from personal experience - yet, but based on what I've read here and at some other sites.

[Alex0230]

This isn't a bad deal if you wanna do something cheap...

http://www.netaffilia.com/ad/electro...2-04/2566.html

Throw in this...
http://www.netaffilia.com/ad/electro...2-04/2534.html
and this...
http://www.netaffilia.com/ad/electro...2-04/2528.html
and this..
http://www.netaffilia.com/ad/electro...2-04/2539.html

....that's assuming you have a spare cdrom to load the os.....

I have a question, I notice lots of people have nice vid cards in their box....is it necessary to have a good video card to playback from the HTPC or is playback from a 350 card just fine. Or do people have the card because you can't record and playback at the same time....just curious...thnx....

[stanger89]

Depends on your display, on an HDTV the 350 isn't enough by any means, I run my 36" at 1280x1024i from a Radeon 9500 (will be upgrading though since it can't do VMR9) and on my parents 46" I run 1776x1000i via the component dongle. 720x480i just can't compare to that. Not to mention no DVD from the 350.

On an SDTV the 350 is plenty, especially if you don't need DVD playback.

[rrussell]

Busy thread! I thought I'd put in my 2c since I have virtually the same setup:

Epia M9000
2699 case
PVR250
120W Dc/Dc psu

Ren - how did you find the heat buildup in that case to be? I had a 120G maxtor in the thing initially, but the whole system kept shutting down due to overheating. I eventually had to move the HD into a firewire enclosure anyway for just that reason. (It really doesn't look that bad)

Rob

[RenHoek]

Rob-
Normally, it's running around 47°C (CPU). If it get's 100% busy for more than 5 minutes (due to a particular bug in Sage...) it climbs to 75°C. Case temp is always 10-15 cooler.

This box is sitting on its own shelf in an enclosed entertainment center (oak cabinet, w/glass door and a 6x12 vent hole behind the Sony HT rcvr/amp a foot or two above it.) It doesn't get much fresh air at all, but the setup seems to work great - VERY stable. Absolutely NO problems/reboots/crashes/etc... Now that I think about it, this is probably the easiest/most stable PC I've ever built.

It even ran at 100% utilization (and 75-78°C) for about 6 hours with no problems the other day when my wife tried to browse the MP3's by albums. I've hosted the MP3's across the LAN, but there's a bug in beta13 that makes that lock up.... My wife was wondering why the HTPC was "sounding like a cell phone ringing" all day -- it was MBM5's high temp alarm going off - I didn't have it setup to shutdown on overtemps. Guess I don't need to, after this "test"...

-RenHoek

[zoso]

You still may want to set up automatic shutdown for temps. Heat damage to the components can be slow and you may start getting data corruption before you know that there is anything wrong.

[tobszanski]

Given the potential heat issues, I may just use a laptop HD internally, and use the 200Gig drive externally for my video storage. This would also mitigate any of the power concerns about using a 3.5" drive in the 2699 itself.