Dell 2400 Powerful Enough as an HTPC?

[UTmtnbiker]

Just picked up one of the hot deals for a Dell 2400 with the following specs:

2.4 Celery
256MB RAM
80GB HD
Ingrated video

I'm wondering if this PC is powerful enough to run as an HTPC (first foray in to the HTPC world) if I put in a hardware based PVR card like the Hauppauge PVR-150 and just use the intgrated video out to output to the display. I'll probably run a 3rd party PVR software and not MCE (dont' think I can without an AGP slot).

Or....am I just asking too much of a $175 computer and should build from scratch?

Any suggestions would be helpful.

 

[robcy]

If this machine is going to replace the VCR, and DVD player, and basically serve as a TIVO clone, you will probably want to up the ram to 512. Other than that I think it will work fine. plus if its attached to a home network, you can watch your recorded shows on any computer in the house while surfing the net, or doing whatever.

 

[AluminumStudios]

Does the 2400 even have an AGP slot?

I don't like those low end machines at all because they are SO limited. IIRC they only hold one hard drive, possibly no AGP (I can't recall), only 2 DIMM slots.

I would tend to buy a higher model with lower specs than a system that lacks the full array of upgrade options, even for the most minor tasks.

 

[piasabird]

A TV card with hardware encoding might be nice if you want to record and play live TV or use MS MCE as an OS. They make some dual TV Tuner cards with Dual hardware encoding.

The Hardware Encoding takes the strain off of the CPU.

I have played DVD's on a Via Mini-ITX Motherboard with an 800Mhz C3 Processor.

 

[adams828]

For just watching TV, playing DVDs, etc, you should be fine with a PVR-150 etc. However I think many other PVR fucntions (such as timeshifting, scaling, etc) you might be limited by the Celeron

 

[dmw16]

Pick up a card like the HD3000 which does the video encoding on the board and you will be fine (if you up the ram to 512). I also recomment KnoppMyth which is a version of Linux written for doing HTPC TIVO type stuff.