Minimum specs for a Media Center PC

[Kaylya]

My Mom's current PC is a PII 350 (448mb ram, geforce2, 2 hard drives...). Basically, she needs a new PC, and her VCR is dying and she wants a DVD player, and she wants to be able to record shows.

What I'm thinking is that it might be possible to take the current PC, add a DVD drive and a capture card, and turn it into a media center type PC. I'm thinking it might be a little too old and slow though... anyone have any thoughts?

 

[mitchafi]

Personally I think you would be better off getting her a $40 DVD player and tivo. I don't even know if a PII 350 would be able to run winxp well...but i'm no expert so wait for more replies

 

[darkswordsman17]

Well, this won't be the cheapest solution, but it will be very cool and will be able to be upgraded or changed if needed.

Get the MSI 865 Barebones small form factor
Get a cheap P4
Get some RAM
Get an Hauppage WinTV 250/350 TV tuner card
Get a large hard drive
Get a dvd burner or just regular dvd drive

There ya go.

You can play dvd's/cd's without even turning the pc actaually on. It looks cool and with that tuner card,
it'll automatically encode tv. You could probably even get by with a celeron in that case.

 

[mitchafi]

that's a pretty cool idea, a portable little tv for capturing. Definitely something I would be interested in making when I get the cash.

 

[MrChad]

The PII 350 isn't going to cut it for HTPC tasks. You'll want at least a moderate P4 for DVD playback and PVR capabilities.

 

[Bassyhead]

Originally posted by: MrChad
The PII 350 isn't going to cut it for HTPC tasks. You'll want at least a moderate P4 for DVD playback and PVR capabilities.

a P2 350 will be fine with DVD playback, but not PVR.

 

[stuman19]

What does PVR mean?

 

[Bassyhead]

Originally posted by: stuman19
What does PVR mean?

personal video recorder