I thought we could start a list of what the folks here have and what they like and dislike about it.
I have
ATI 9600
Hauppauge mce250 (tuner card)
Avermedia a180 (HDTV card)
Shuttle Nforce2 ultra (with DD encoding)
512MB ram
Athlon 2500+
Logitech lx500 (mouse keyboard wireless)
ATI remote wonder 2
300GB HDD
Radio Shack 15-1880 HDTV antenna
I like the system, though it is only barely powerful enough to do HDTV.
The avermedia card works ok, but the software for using it in conjunction with with windows XP pro, is craptastic. The signal meter is very tiny and impossible to tell if you are helping or hurting, and the default settings do not use the GPU to accelerate (which is necessary for HDTV resolutions).
The best thing is the antenna, which is amazing, it is cheap <$50.00 and it has excellent reception for the size. Seriously it is amazing.
The keyboard and mouse work from the couch, but I use the remote wonder instead.
There is one problem with it though, you can barely get the mouse on the remote to work when watching HDTV b/c the CPU is maxed, so perhaps a better rig would help with that.
For anyone thinking about getting an HTPC: I can only say do it it truly is awesome once you get everything working...It can be a bit of a pain, but I never want to go back to the regular method of watching TV/DVDs again.
I have
ATI 9600
Hauppauge mce250 (tuner card)
Avermedia a180 (HDTV card)
Shuttle Nforce2 ultra (with DD encoding)
512MB ram
Athlon 2500+
Logitech lx500 (mouse keyboard wireless)
ATI remote wonder 2
300GB HDD
Radio Shack 15-1880 HDTV antenna
I like the system, though it is only barely powerful enough to do HDTV.
The avermedia card works ok, but the software for using it in conjunction with with windows XP pro, is craptastic. The signal meter is very tiny and impossible to tell if you are helping or hurting, and the default settings do not use the GPU to accelerate (which is necessary for HDTV resolutions).
The best thing is the antenna, which is amazing, it is cheap <$50.00 and it has excellent reception for the size. Seriously it is amazing.
The keyboard and mouse work from the couch, but I use the remote wonder instead.
There is one problem with it though, you can barely get the mouse on the remote to work when watching HDTV b/c the CPU is maxed, so perhaps a better rig would help with that.
For anyone thinking about getting an HTPC: I can only say do it it truly is awesome once you get everything working...It can be a bit of a pain, but I never want to go back to the regular method of watching TV/DVDs again.
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