Home Unit to play Divx/VCD/DVD

[unixpeon]

Heya, I'm amazed that no one has tried this before, or if they have that they haven't put up a webpage about it. Currently I play divx/vcd/dvd on my PC and just do TV Out to my TV, with cables laying all over the place. My vision is to build a home unit that I can put up w/ all of my other units (TiVo, VCR, etc).

The questions that I am asking myself are mainly:

1) What CPU should I shoot for (maybe dual celeron)?
2) Are there any motherboards with built in high end video cards (GeForce/etc)?
3) Where the hell am I going to find a case?

I have been searching all weekend for various things and I have yet to come across a motherboard that has a powerful video card built in. Abit has a unit called E-Classroom that I am waiting to hear back on, it may be everything that I need. It even has the option of TV Out. All in all, it should be a pretty easy project.

Any comments/ideas/thoughts are appreciated 😉

-Adam / unixpeon

 

[jungerer]

What are you using for tv out?

 

[unixpeon]

Currently? Im using a Matrox G400 (Dualhead).

 

[jungerer]

Ah, I'm looking for more of an addon card. I'm happy with my video card.

Thanks

 

[samgau]

This is the current specs of my dvd/mp3/soon to be internet machine...
Celeron 333a PPGA
i810 micro atx mobo w/ onboard video<- piece of $#!t if you ask me...no voltage adj. so i can't overclock my cpu
its not stable enough at stock voltage... 🙁
64 MB PC100 micron sdram
30 gb quantum drive 7200rpm ata 66
hollywood + dvd decoder card <- the image quality of the HWdecoder surpasses any videocard in my opinion and it has digital out and svhs connector to the TV
philips 2x DVD drive...i think its 2x...may be faster, it has 32x cd read...
sb128 pci sound card <- soon to be replaced with an MX300 for 4point surround, until i get a true 5.1 sound system...have to wait next year or somehting...
14in monitor to run the awesome whitecap winamp plugin while playing MP3's
internal zip drive

missing a pci nic for connectivity <- coming soon and the 50ft cat5 cable to connect it to my hub

total investment...dunno, cpu was about $100 when i bought it long ago, 40 for the mobo, 40 for the ram, 50 for the decoder/dvd drive combo, 25 for the mx300, the sb128 is borrowed...the 14in is about 6 years old..i've had it for at least 3 yrs...the zip about 70, its purely optional though, the nic about 20...114 for the 30 giger when i bought it...total: 389 dollars minus the zip...not bad for a pc... considering my only recent expense was the mobo, ram and mx300... the rest was aquired over the last 3 years...you'd probably spend less nowdays for a much more powerful machine...duron 700,geforce mx...something like that.. 🙂

Sam out

 

[unixpeon]

Cool, thanks for the info.

Have you tried playing Divx or VCDs on that? The VCDs should be fine, but Divx is a really CPU intensive format.

 

[samgau]

Nope..have not tried divx yet...if it cant crank it...i have the 850 for that...*laffs* no seriously..i think the 333 should be enough...im in search of a better mobo so i can overclock it to 500...should be able to handle almost anything then... 🙂