SageTV and Mini-ITX

[remmy925]

OK. So I think it may be cool to do the Mini-ITX thing. I am recently single and will have more money to throw around. Anybody got an ITX box? My idea is to get a 2 pci slot riser and run two PVR-250s with it and a large hard drive. Want to run Windows with as few services as I can and maybe change the shell to a minimalist shell like BlackBox for Windows to save resources. What do you guys think? Cool toy or lame ash waste of time?!?!?

[IKK]

I built a min-itx box to try sage out. Works great except for expanding. Even with 2 pci slots it hard when you want to add multipule feeds. The video out is ok nothing to rave about. A pvr 350 might be a better choice here. But if it is just one box you are looking to hookup, no issue there. The 250-350 card does all the proccessing work.

For the price of a mini-itx cant go wrong. Have fun
You could always convert your mini-itx into a client later on.

[ravenray]

Yup, running a epia m9000. Works great!, but I ran it as a client. I will be getting a nicer case hopefully. I didn't like the other htpc cases as they seem a bit too bulky for me.

[remmy925]

Hmmm... I dont think I want to use it as a client. I have recently moved into an apartment by myself. I am leaving my ex-fiance and her kid everything except my TV, PC and a few personal effects. Was thinking of using the desktop wich is currently my HTPC as a client so I could save money on a tv in my bedroom and use a dedicated box in the livingroom. Expected to put XP on the box in the living room but run something like Aston shell or Black Box for win on it to save resources. It would be a dedicated HTPC and nothing else. From what you say, would that be a bad idea? I figure playback on an ITX would be fine because it should have hardware MPEG-2 accelleration. Is the MPEG playback not as good as I would suspect?

[nielm]

My only concern with my M10000 server is expandability...
I have a fanless case from www.hush-technologies.com with only 1 PCI slot, and I now want to expand with another tuner and more disk space... This is going to be tricky and messy and expensive (and possibly loud) with USB-drives and PVR-USB2 tuner...

The other issue is that it cannot play full-res (768x576 in PAL land) DIVX/XVID's (half-res is OK...), and you can only use Overlay renderer (no VMR9 transparent OSD)...

[remmy925]

Good info to know. I noticed that the chipset had 3d support so I figured OSD wouldnt be a problem. I guess if I just want to play with one I will get one. Might actually be a better idea to make my server out of a regular more powerful PC and try to keep down the noise. Thank you for the help.