Zotac with Atom 330 capable of HD DVR?

[mazeroth]

I'm looking to build a 24x7 PC for whole house audio streaming and to use as a Windows 7 Media Center DVR that will be networked to the other PC's and 360 in my house. The PC will have a Hauppauge USB tuner for OTA (already own, see link) and will only be used to record OTA HDTV. My question is, is this combo capable of recording the HD from the USB tuner? I purchased it a few days ago real cheap on Amazon and before I open it up and install it I want to make sure it will do what I need it to do. I'd really like a low power option and this one looks appealing.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-027-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-034-_-Product

 

[fzkl]

Depends on whether the video encoding software can make use of the GPU. If it can, I am thinking this should be fine (some TV Tuners do, don't recollect which ones). Else it is a question of whether the Atom CPU can handle this. I am guessing it can if recording is the only main activity you are doing in the system at a given time.

 

[v8envy]

I'm not familiar with that specific product, but for OTA HD the tuner should simply give you the bits it is receiving from the broadcast. No transcoding is going on at all. For SD, it'll be using in-hardware mpeg2 encoding. So if your CPU can keep up reading the data from the USB port and writing it to the HD you're good to go. In theory the Atom has more than enough power to do that.

If you need to convert the format for playback with your other devices you will likely not be able to transcode in real time on that CPU or GPU. But for a DVR, do you really care if a 60 minute show takes 120 or 240 minutes to convert to a different format/bit rate?

 

[zsdersw]

I'd consider a Celeron E3300 and a mobo with the GF9300 chipset. It's more powerful and not that much more expensive.