WinTV-PVR-500MCE useful anymore?

[SuperG]

A few moons ago, I bought a WinTV-PVR-500MCE with the nVidia DVD decoder planning to have a 3 tuner (I own a USB PVR too) install of GBPVR. Shortly after the items arrived my world got turned a bit upside down and the card sat NIB until I came across it again today.

I'm at a crossroads.

I still have the full height beastie box (down 1 HD due to failure) that could take this card. It's turned into a family PC though and it would be hard fought to get it back for a dedicated PVR. It has a beefy power supply, high-end video card, and 4 GB of RAM. The big issue is it's a Prescott processor, so it's a hot box with a lot of fan noise. Outside of a new drive, it's all paid for.

I just came into a small form-factor Core2 box that is dead silent. It has (2) PCIe x1 slots, a PCIe x16 slot, and a PCI slot. 2.33 2 core proc, can take up to 8GB of RAM (4 is planned), 2 SATA HDs, and a full size CD-type drive. It's limited to a 240W power supply with no possible upgrade. Probably close to $400 to get this box into a dual-tuner HVR-2250, (2)500GB HDs, Geforce 8400 GS, 4GB or RAM.

I'm not digital at this stage, so analog tuners are fine for now.

Each direction has pluses and minuses. Anybody have some thoughts on which path to take?

[pBS]

i'd go with the mini silent one...it'll handle things well and not be a huge drain in doing so..
the 8400 is a bit underpowered for hd tho..a step up and you'll be ok..[8600+ or ati 3000+]
the core2 proc. is best for htpc as it is faster and cooler and better power bits..
a bit more video card and you could pop in a bluray drive..
[less than $100 thesedays]

plus you'll not have the kiddos wanting to play with it all the time..
[the other rig probably does games better]
2 gig should be enough mem for htpc also..the rest wouldn't get used..
[and makes hibernates take longer]

[SuperG]

I was starting to go deaf from all the crickets...Thanks for the reply!

The power supply on this box being so weak (240W) I think it's going to have a hard time with the 8400 GS which wants a 300W minimum PS, yet is listed in the specs on this box as a compatible card. Here are the specs on what I bought:

Detailed item info
Product Description
Play it and watch it in HD with a Verto GeForce 8400GS HDCP-capable graphics card. Features full support of DirectX9 and DirectX 10 for games, plus the ultimate HD movie experience with HD-DVD and Blue-ray movie playback capability.

Processor / Memory
Video Memory Installed: 256 MB
Graphics Processor / Vendor: NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS

Expansion / Connectivity
Interfaces: 1 x DVI-I (dual link) - 29 pin combined DVI, 1 x VGA - 15 pin HD D-Sub (HD-15), 1 x HDTV output ( on supplied cable ), 1 x S-video output
Compatible Slots: 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x16

Video Output
Video Output Type: Graphics adapter
TV Interface: HDTV out
Max Resolution (external): 2560 x 1600
Video Interface Type: PCI Express 2.0 x16

That says it can hadle BluRay, but I don't know about it too much as I don't have a high-def TV. What will be taxed the most during recording and playback on this system?

Thanks!

[ga_mueller]

That 8400gs uses about 25W. I've played everything EXCEPT bd's, CPU usage is under 10% during playback, with the 8400gs doing hw accel. My PS is only 200W!!

[SuperG]

That's encouraging!

I was going to do (2) 500GB drives in Raid1 for redundancy since I predict the case will be warmer than not when it gets filled up with all this equipment.

About how many hours can I expect to get on a 500GB drive? I figure the OS is around 12 GB, and the drive once formatted is around 480...

[Sykor]

i'd go with the mini silent one...it'll handle things well and not be a huge drain in doing so..
the 8400 is a bit underpowered for hd tho..a step up and you'll be ok..[8600+ or ati 3000+]
the core2 proc. is best for htpc as it is faster and cooler and better power bits..
a bit more video card and you could pop in a bluray drive..
[less than $100 thesedays]

For the sake of discussion/enlightenment, and given my current attempt to scavange some bargains in used hardware for an upgrade:
The highlighted sentence confuses me. I'm fully aware that the higher ranked cards in Nvidia's family are (in sheer power/processing ability) way ahead the 8400. But.... later versions of the 8400GS use the G98 chip (instead of the G86), that provides full hardware acceleration (from what have read/understood about Purevideo HD) for most common hd codecs. All previous ones only do partial decoding..

My confusion is: is the pre-G98 chips partial decoding, a hardware limitation, or a Purevideo HD's limitation?

Because if it is a hardware limitation, and correct me if I'm wrong, the ability to fully offload the decoding process to the GPU alone would justify going for a 8400gs instead of other higher ranked cards.

This of course, when we view a htpc mainly as a video player, which is my view. I only play a couple games through emulation (Gamezone... what a great plugin... )