My First PVR

Nickhamm · 2006-03-21, 01:31 AM

Me and my cousin rounded up some spare parts we had around and decided to make a PVR using GB-PVR. The parts we have accumulated are as follows:

250 watt ATX Power Supply
Shuttle SpaceWalker MB with AC'97 Audio (I have to check on the model)
AMD Athlon 1GHz
512MB+ SDRAM
Toshiba 8x DVD+/-RW Drive
WD 40GB Hard Drive (Plan on upgrading later)
ATI Rage Fury Pro (32MB Memory)
nVidia GeForce 3 (32MB Memory, may be 64MB, I have to check)
Hauppauge PVR-250MCE
The Hauppauge MCE Remote PVR150 Model 1062/232 (ordered on eBay several months after we had the TV-Tuner)

So the great question is: Will it work? The video cards that we have are fairly old, but I had hope that they would work with GB-PVR. If not, can you recommend something fairly inexpensive that would work well. Also, I believe we have around 768MB total memory, but I am unsure if all of it is good.

daphatty · 2006-03-21, 01:38 AM

Definitely swap out the video card. You should be able to pickup GeForce 6600 GT for around $40 from newegg. Everything else seems ok although the CPU is a bit on the slow side. I'd say it will work but don't have high expectations. Also, bear in mind that if it does work, and you like it, YOU WILL find yourself upgrading the hardware. Mark my words. Big Grin

spyork · 2006-03-21, 01:39 AM

I don't see why that config wouldn't work. The Hauppauge card does the MPEG2 encoding, so you don't have to worry about the processor dealing with it. One of my friends used to run his PVR on an Athlon 700 with an old ATI w/ TV-OUT card. Just like you said you will want to upgrade the hard drive down the road and probably even the video card like daphatty said. Good luck with the build...

Nickhamm · 2006-03-21, 01:51 AM

One of my friends may be upgrading their Video Cards from a GeForce FX 5200 to a GeForce 6600. When he does that, he told me that he will probably give me his old card. Now, I am planning to use this card in my Main Pc to replace the Radeom 9000 64MB card that is in there right now. If I were to upgrade the Video Card from the GeForce or Rage Fury to the Radeon 9000, would I notice a signifigant performance boost or would it still just be worth spending the $40 or so to get the GeForce 6600 card? I also may be willing to scrap upgrading my main PC if the GeForce 5200 has enough of a performance boost over the Radeon 9000.

Also, I don't know how upgradeable the Processor is because the fastest processor I think that board will run is a 1.4GHz AMD Athlon XP. That is why we upgraded my cousins main PC to a Soyo P4VTE with a 2.93GHz Celeron D. Unfortunately, that is his budget gaming PC (he plays semi-older games and doesn't need the latest and greatest), so we are stuck with the spare parts for a PVR.

sgilani · 2006-03-21, 02:35 AM

I've got an FX5200 on an Athlon XP 2500+ rig, outputting to my TV, and it works great.. using the Purevideo decoders and Hardware acceleration, my CPU load stays around 35-40% while doing timeshifting.

If I were in your shoes, I'd use the money to go for a newer mobo/CPU. You can get simple Celeron boxes for around $250 after rebate these days from most places... not a bad deal.

Nickhamm · (This post was last modified: 2006-03-21, 04:24 AM by Nickhamm.)

Thnaks for the info on the FX 5200. I will probably end up using that card. I did some reading about the Radeon 9000 vs. the GeForce 3 and came up witht he result that they are very similar as far as specs (the GeForce 3 actually being a bit better than the Radeon). As far as upgrading, we will probably do that in the future, but this was just sort of a spur of the moment idea to throw together somespare parts. If we can get it to work and like it, we will probably upgrade it. Our main objective is to have it record TV overnight (like some cartoons and such on Toon Disney at 2:30am) and watch then the next day so we don't have to be up so late. Right now, we are in a bit of a bind because we are both broke.

Also, I finally got ahold of my cousin and the motherboard is a Shuttle SpaceWalker AK32A Motherboard. The GeForce 3 card is 64MB. The TV tuner is also a 150MCE, not a 250MCE (accidental typo).

daphatty · 2006-03-21, 04:24 AM

Well, the good news is that you will see much better recordings with the equipment you currently have if all you plan to record are cartoons. Cartoons seem to come out the best regardless of what hardware people use. Like I said before, you will get hooked on this so I'd suggest finding some disposable income. Smile

You are going to need it. Big Grin

Welcome to the club!

gEd · 2006-03-21, 09:48 AM

good luck with the new pc, i think that it should work ok.

make sure you have > 512MB ram in the pc.

experiment with the medium and low settings to see how recordings look. Low may be ok for cartoons - decide what looks best for you.

start saving for an additional HD - the biggest you can afford. You can then add this to your setup, although you may have to do some fiddling about if you then move the recording files.

volksman · 2006-03-21, 06:42 PM

It will work...When I started this project I was using a laptop as my PC. The vid card was an 8 Meg ATI Rage Mobile. It was the single cause of any problems. It takes very little to make GB work as far as hardware goes. The vid card is probably the most important component if you wish to watch shows through GB. If you are just recording then a low end vid card would be fine....

just my 2 cents... Smile