Topic: Building an A/V PC

[mizary]

I live downtown Cincy...  so I SHOULD be able to get OTA HD... BUT...  my regular tv reception is HORRIBLE.  Most of the TV stations broacast towers are north of me (not that far) and my windows (13th floor) face south.  If I could get that I'd probably forget about cable.  Also despite being on the 13th floor downtown cincy is in a valley.  I think the tv stations broadcast from on top of the hill...

Also I don't have a HD tv...  But I suppose the pc could "downsample" (not the right word) it to SD.

Hmmm... something else to think about.

Although I'd like to have two tuners in my htpc...  And buying TWO HD cards could be a little pricey.

However I still don't fully understand how the dual tuners work with a cable/sat box (STB) anyways...  Do you need two STB's to record one show while watching another?  Otherwise I guess the card can act as a cable ready tuner?  But doesn't that limit you to certain stations depending on your cable/sat packages?  Like you can't order PPV and stuff for example...

I also read about the many problems which can crop up trying to run multiple displays on a HTPC... which is what I was planning on doing.  So I may still end up buying a dedicated machine for the HTPC.  If I do I'll be doing it on the cheap...  so that could be interesting.

My currnet pc is a 1.4ghz athlon xp, 512mb...  I would probably keep this as the HTPC and buy a cheap dell for my main desktop system.  Or I might build one depending on the prices...  It would be nice to have a box with sata hard drives for doing video work.

--mizary

[L Ron Hoover]

Stupid question time.

When you guys talk about noise, do you actually mean hearing the fans operate, or do fans actually generate noise that carries through SPDIF into whatever DAC you use? (audible through speakers)

[mizary]

I've just been talking about actual fan noise...  my current box is pretty loud.  I'd want to quiet it down a bit if I am going to let it run 24/7... 

--mizary