Processor & RAM recommendations

[paultnl]

Hi all and thanks to Sub for GB-PVR.

I am making a dedicated PVR box for the living room and have just taken delivery of an Asus Pundit[/URL] barebone system to which I will add a Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 160GB drive and a Hauppauge 350 from my old system.

Can anyone give me some recommendations for the processor, memory size/speed and DVD burner.

I will post pictures and decriptions as the build progresses.

Thanks,

Paul

[paultnl]

sorry messed up the URL

http://uk.asus.com/products/desktop/pund...erview.htm

pundit

[jquinlan]

Quote[/b] ]Can anyone give me some recommendations for the processor, memory size/speed and DVD burner.

I use an AMD 2.2 gig Athlon with 512 266DDR and a second Maxtor HD of 250gigs for all GB-PVR media.
It support my 2 PVR-250's and 2 MVP's with no problems.  I use mine as a dedicated server and use the MVP's for access so I dont have the issue of processing video on the CPU. The 350 will help you for TV out without using alot of CPU cycles. As long as you stick with the hardware decoding like the 350's and MVP's then anything in the AMD XP and Intel P4 model should work great for you. Just stay away from the weaker Celeron and Durons, they are not bad processors, they just are weeker on the math co-processors and cache for decoding and cross-coding of video and audio.
Any DVD Burner should work well, you just have to decide on DVD+ or DVD- or a combo drive.

[fini]

Agree with the above, although I would add that, currently, the best size of hard disk to get is a 200GB as it works out cheapest per GB. I'm currently using an 80GB one (dedicated to the videos, not with OS on and everything) and I've filled it in a month and am now having to compress all the files until I can afford my next comp upgrade (new mobo, AMD 64 3400 (well this bit depends on when I get around to it) and a SATA 200GB drive to take me up to 280GB dedicated).

fini

[reven]

make sure you get a dual layer dvd burner, they are as cheap as single layer ones these days and well twice the size 8.4gb (around that, not sure on exact size). nec3500 is a nice one. 16x dvd+r only 2.4 dual layer write thou

[tkgafs]

For what its worth my system is a AMD Duron 1800 with 512mb ram, PVR350, 80gb hard disc and a MVP.

My main use of the system is for music playback and some recording of tv programs to replay at different time

everything works fine on the pc but using the remote on the mvp is a little slow [but still perfectly usable]

10mb connection between mvp and server is fine for music playback and videos recorded at the gbpvr medium quality
if they are recorded at high quality it needs a 100mb connection

Tkgafs