Required spec for GBPVR server? Newbie.

[SteveE]

Hi,
I've had a home network/server project on the go for a little while now. I've pretty much got the house wired with cat5 and have put together my server which is going into the loft along with the switch, ADSL router, etc. My initial plan was to have this solely as a file/mp3 server but after researching standalone mp3 streamers I came across the MVP and GBPVR and have liked what I read!

As my initial requirements for my home server weren't that huge (apart from big storage) the spec isn't fantastic - it's a PIII 933Mhz with 256Mb ram. Storage is taken care of by an Adaptec SATA Raid card and at the moment it's all running W2k3 Server but I can rebuild to XP quite easily if you think it'd be more compatible?

Basically, if I get a Nova-T PCI and an MVP, what sort of performance can I expect from GBPVR on this sort of kit? Apologies if this is a "length of a piece of string" question.

All help/comments appreciated,

Steve

[SteveE]

Thanks Tipster! I'll start looking at extra memory then (I feel a trip to ebay on the cards to ditch the 2 x 128Mb)! When you say the default 'Blue' I'm guessing that's the colour scheme / backgrounds? Is there much of a hit if I choose other skins? I'd also like to play around with some of the plugins which I guess would also have a knock-on effect?

My main concern is 'lag'. What I don't want is 5 second delays after you hit a button - which is what I currently get on my old On-Digital (pre-freeview) STB. I'm trying to keep the future WAF quite high so I can justify my playing around with all this fun stuff ;-)

I think I'll stick with W2k3 as the server OS as I'm more comfortable with that being left on permenantly than I am with XP.

Just out of curiosity are you running Server/MVP or a HTPC? I'm going down the Server/MVP route to keep the boxes in the lounge to a minimum - I can sneak in an MVP but not the big beige tower case! If so, what spec is you server?

Cheers,

Steve

[sub]

Basically, if I get a Nova-T PCI and an MVP, what sort of performance can I expect from GBPVR on this sort of kit? Apologies if this is a "length of a piece of string" question.

My main concern is 'lag'. What I don't want is 5 second delays after you hit a button - which is what I currently get on my old On-Digital (pre-freeview) STB. I'm trying to keep the future WAF quite high so I can justify my playing around with all this fun stuff ;-)

I'm not sure if you're talking about channel changes or something else but...

Unfortunately DVB doesnt really combine very well with the MVP. The main problem is when you're in timeshift mode (as is used by the MVP), the 3rd party multiplexer filters take about 5 seconds to start producing data which makes for comparitively long channel channels. Changing hardware on will probably not reduce this by much.