Mailing List Archive

On Tuesday, May 13, 2003, at 06:40 PM, Pete Hartman wrote:


> At 01:31 PM 5/13/03 -0700, Cedar wrote:
>> Many people insist on buying pretty expensive hardware for this
>> project. They come to the list hoping for suggestions for $400-500
>> dollar hardware, then say "by the way, I want it to be powerful
>> enough to drop in a second tuner, be really small, look really good,
>> be quiet, etc etc etc". People want the impossible. Instead how
>> about buying a sub 2Ghz processor, 256 ram, sub 100 gig HD, a cheap
>> software based tuner card, cheap board like an nforce with built in
>> nic, sound, video, and a cheap/ugly/loud case. I know you can do that
>> for well under $500.
>
> I'd be really surprised if such a system performed reasonably well,
> unless it was just barely sub 2Ghz. I priced my hardware for low end
> and it wasn't well enough under $500 for me to justify not going ahead
> and spending the extra money as insurance that when I get it going it
> will actually function as desired.


Not true. I have an athlon xp 2000+ which I believe is in the
neighborhood of 1.6 Ghz. I paid less than $80 including cooler (last
november so prices have probably fallen). And my machine can do lovely
live tv (so one capture, one play stream) at 480x480 mpeg4 with > 50%
idle cpu. Of course I could do easily do 640x480, but since I can't
personally tell the difference I do 480x480 to slim file size down. I
spent about $500 on my system total, but considering the 512 ram, huge
drive and all the spare cpu cycles I have, I think it could easily be
done for less. It just takes careful online buying, build it yourself,
and don't buy all in one night. Do it over a month and take good deals
as they come up. Also having a nearby closet to stick an ugly/loud case
in cuts cost down too.


best,

Cedar