upgrading an older MCPC to do HDTV

[zed013]

here's what i have currently:

a nice, silent sony vaio VGC-RA820G box
3.2GHz p4
2G ram
250GB SATA HD, 1TB of external storage via usb2
128MB pci-e radeon x300, tv tuner, can spit out s-video, dvi, vga, rca (1 port each, currently running 24" lcd and 22" crt monitors on 1900x1200 and 1600x1200 just fine)
winxp media center for pvr
remote, IR blasters
some sort of 5.1 DTS audio card (not sure what it is, but it spits optical audio to my receiver, which reads it as DTS)
DVD ROM and DVD-RW +/- drives
all sorts of digital media inputs
firewire and USB2 ports
2 open pci slots


here's what i want it to do:

-DVR functionality for HDTV and SDTV, both over the air and for digital cable, doable with a remote, HDMI preferable, use of external drives for DVR preferable also but not necessary
-emulator for all legacy game systems
-music storage, playback (kinda have to use itunes for this since i have macs in the house and need to stream it around)
-blu-ray playback
-(preferable but not necessary) stream video to other boxes/rooms in the house



is this all possible without upgrading my mobo/processor? what extra components are necessary to make this happen? if at all possible, try to make user friendliness the biggest concern with regard to extra components, as my housemate is somewhat retarded with computers, and i'd prefer that she isn't going to mess anything up or whine about it being too complicated.

any advice on how/what to upgrade? from what i've seen, sagetv is probably my best software choice, but i'm still a little unclear as to what hardware it supports that my machine can also handle.

thanks in advance!

[Slipshod]

Originally Posted by zed013

here's what i want it to do:

-DVR functionality for HDTV and SDTV, both over the air and for digital cable, doable with a remote, HDMI preferable, use of external drives for DVR preferable also but not necessary
-emulator for all legacy game systems
-music storage, playback (kinda have to use itunes for this since i have macs in the house and need to stream it around)
-blu-ray playback
-(preferable but not necessary) stream video to other boxes/rooms in the house

DVR:
* I recommend using an internal hard disk for the DVR recording drive, the performance on USB external disks isn't great. It also must be formatted using 64k clusters.
* HDHomerun is a nice external (ethernet) dual-tuner option for OTA and digital cable (un-encrypted). If you want premiums in HD you'll need the Hauppage HD-PVR, which is USB and requires a set-top-box to hookup to. Analogue cable means adding in a hauppage capture card.
* For HDMI just pick the right video card
* Lots of options for remotes, no problem there.

Emulator:
* Not sure how CPU intensive these are, guessing it won't be much. Try running it now and see what the utilization is.

Music Storage:
* Point Sage at the directory the music is in for Sage's use. Point Itunes at it as well for the macs.

Blu-Ray:
Good luck. You'll need an internal blu-ray drive and a MUCH better video card, one that FULLY offloads HD processing. ATI 3xxx series (34xx, 35xx, etc...) comes to mind. This is potentially very painful to get working.

Streaming:
*Should be fine as long as you formatted that dedicated drive w/ 64k clusers. I had a 3.2 P4 w/ 1GB streaming HD to two extenders with no issues.


If you want it to be as painless as possible, skip the local playback, blu-ray, and emulator stuff and just use an HD Extender for playback. Pretty much means all you have to do to the PC is put in a hard disk and deal with the tuners. This is what I did and it's WAY less hassle.

[zed013]

Originally Posted by Slipshod

DVR:
* I recommend using an internal hard disk for the DVR recording drive, the performance on USB external disks isn't great. It also must be formatted using 64k clusters.

i'm more of a mac guy and don't speak too well about formatting. what's the 64k clusters thing mean, exactly?

* HDHomerun is a nice external (ethernet) dual-tuner option for OTA and digital cable (un-encrypted). If you want premiums in HD you'll need the Hauppage HD-PVR, which is USB and requires a set-top-box to hookup to. Analogue cable means adding in a hauppage capture card.
* For HDMI just pick the right video card
* Lots of options for remotes, no problem there.

yeah, i definitely want to get HBO, so hauppage seems the way to go. as to remotes, do the harmony things from logitech talk to computer-based dvrs well enough?

Emulator:
* Not sure how CPU intensive these are, guessing it won't be much. Try running it now and see what the utilization is.

yeah, not an issue. i'm fairly sure 3.2GHz can fake a snes and sega genesis . mostly, i was referring to whether or not sage would do anything that would render emulation difficult or impossible upon installing it.

Music Storage:
* Point Sage at the directory the music is in for Sage's use. Point Itunes at it as well for the macs.

cool.

Blu-Ray:
Good luck. You'll need an internal blu-ray drive and a MUCH better video card, one that FULLY offloads HD processing. ATI 3xxx series (34xx, 35xx, etc...) comes to mind. This is potentially very painful to get working.

bleh, i was afraid that blu-ray was a bit of a pipe dream. i guess i'll ps3 my way to glory eventually.

Streaming:
*Should be fine as long as you formatted that dedicated drive w/ 64k clusers. I had a 3.2 P4 w/ 1GB streaming HD to two extenders with no issues.

If you want it to be as painless as possible, skip the local playback, blu-ray, and emulator stuff and just use an HD Extender for playback. Pretty much means all you have to do to the PC is put in a hard disk and deal with the tuners. This is what I did and it's WAY less hassle.

does the hauppage box you mentioned need to be usb-ed to my vaio or does it all work through 10/100BT networking? sorry--i've never even touched the streaming route before and am not quite sure how it works, exactly; all the dvr-ing i've done before was through direct hookups.


and thanks for the help, obviously .

[Slipshod]

Originally Posted by zed013

i'm more of a mac guy and don't speak too well about formatting. what's the 64k clusters thing mean, exactly?

It's how big of a chunk of a file the disk stores as one unit. Normally it's in 4K chunks. Example: A file that's 6k would take 2 4k clusters to store, or one 64K cluster. Larger cluster sizes are less efficient with alot of small files, but are significantly faster transfering large files, which makes it very resistant to slowdown caused by hard drive fragmentation.

When you add a new (blank - get your data off of it) disk to windows, you'll need to go into "my computer", right-click on it, properties, and select format. In that menu you can select a cluster size. Pick 64k, and then do a quick format. This will erase EVERYTHING on the disk, but make it ready to store video.

yeah, i definitely want to get HBO, so hauppage seems the way to go. as to remotes, do the harmony things from logitech talk to computer-based dvrs well enough?

I don't have a lot of experience with adding a remote to a PC since I opted for the HD extender. Maybe somebody else can chime in with suggestions...

yeah, not an issue. i'm fairly sure 3.2GHz can fake a snes and sega genesis . mostly, i was referring to whether or not sage would do anything that would render emulation difficult or impossible upon installing it.

Shouldn't be incompatible. You'll need to do some mucking to make Sage launch the emulator though. I don't know much about getting it working...

does the hauppage box you mentioned need to be usb-ed to my vaio or does it all work through 10/100BT networking? sorry--i've never even touched the streaming route before and am not quite sure how it works, exactly; all the dvr-ing i've done before was through direct hookups.

There's a thread on one either the general or sagetv forums that talks about it. It's not quite available yet (close), and it will probbly take a little bit for sage to support it properly. Costs $249, and it has a USB 2.0 connection to the computer. You plug the component output from your STB in this unit and it will transcode everything (including HD) to H.264 and deliver it to the PC over USB. When the sage support is done it will look like any other tuner to Sage.

and thanks for the help, obviously .

No problem. It's a pretty nice community here and most of us are really excited about this as a hobby.

Cheers,
Slipshod

[Djc208]

If you go with the HD-PVR and want to leave your computer as your playback source (as opposed to the HD extender) I'd seriously look into the graphics card(s) Shipshod was talking about (ATI X3xxx series or nVidia 8xxx/9xxx). The HD-PVR also records to H.264, similar to Blue-Ray, so playback can be hard on an older, slower machine like yours (and mine).

There's a link to a sample clip around her somewhere if you want to test your machine and see if it works.