Can my machine handle GB-PVR?

[mailmarshall]

Hi

I have an AMD XP 2600 (2ghtz) Athalon with 512mg RAM and 320 gig HD. I am thinking of making this into a PVR. Am thinking of getting the Hauppage (150 and 3000) cards.

The 150 card will be for picking up the Analgue channels and the 3000 card will be for picking up DVB-S.

Living in New Zealand ,we dont have HD TV yet (not likely till next year at least) but we do have Digitial TV. This includes Freeview and the SKY satelite dish will also pick up DVB-S signal now.

Do you think the machine will be Ok to run GB-PVR or should I be looking at something more grunty?

[HtV]

I think you'll be fine. Of course picture quality very much depends on the specs of your video card.
Welcome aboard, you'll find that this forum is the friendliest forum on the web.
Sub the maker of GBPVR is the best "one-mans-band" I've ever "seen", he does a great job in programming and support.

cya Hans

[mailmarshall]

Wow that was a quick response!!!

The following are my specs :
AMD XP 2600+ (2GHz)
512MB DDR RAM
320GB Hard drive
Inno3D GeForce4 Ti4200, 128MB DDR, TVOut/VideoIn video card
Hauppage 150
Hauppage 3000

[HtV]

I really do know very little about videocards, just try it out and see how the picture quality turns out. There is a lot of info here to help you.
Did you find the wiki: http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php

[stustunz]

if it was me i would go for a better video card and another 512 of ram and add another hard drive for system to go onto so that you are recording onto seperate physical drive from the operating system
but other than that its fine for new zealand tv
but that said give it go it will probably be fine

[gEd]

The CPU will be fine. I run my AMD XP cpu at ~2Ghz even tho it would go up to about 2.3 if I wanted it to.

512MB may just be enough to get started but as stu said, 1GB would be better. (I'm using about 570MB atm). Shut down any windows services that are not needed (http://www.theeldergeek.com/services_guide.htm) and don't start installing additional plugins until you have more RAM. Also run msconfig, startup tab and unclick any apps that are not needed.

I think a 320GB drive is plenty to get up and running. It depends on how much stuff you record and how much you keep vs delete. You could add another archive drive at a later stage and use the video library plugin to move recordings more than x days old over to that drive.

the graphics card is borderline as stated already but give it a go before you get another one. search the forum for TI4200. there is a guy called 235301 who had one of these cards but has since switched to a newer card.

You also need to install an mpeg video and audio decoder (see wiki) and select it in the config.exe (don't leave on system default).

oh and as you have a 150, you will need the timestamp fix

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=14006

good luck and welcome