Newbie Hardware Question

[Rory]

Hi
I am about to bite the bullet and buy some hardware and would like a guiding hand ! I am hoping to get a Hauppauge Nova-T 90002 (PCI) and a Hauppauge MediaMVP for output to conventional CRT TV. The PC will be at one end of our (long) living room and the MediaMVP near the TV, connected by 100 Mbit Ethernet router/switch. I am hoping to use the PC as a PVR and to stream DIvx/Xvid .avi's and Mpegs. If anyone has any general recommendations I would be happy to listen, I would also like to know do I need a dual tuner card for pause and rewind of TV ? Is there more hardware I need ? I have digital cable as well, can I use that as a source or should I stick to Freeview ? Do I use the MediaMVP remote only ?

TIA
Rory

Gigabyte GA-7DXE, Athlon XP2400, 768 Mb Ram 60 Gig IDE

[martint123]

You don't need a dual tuner to pause and rewind TV - they can be handy for recording one channel while watching another or recording two channels though.
If you have digital cable, I guess it goes to the TV as RF or SCART from a set top box? if so then you would need an analogue tuner to record from that along with an IR blaster to make it change channels - that's what I use for recording stuff of Sky. The MVP remote is all you need at the TV end of your room to control it all.

Martin

[mlippitt]

I was in the same boat as you a few months ago and bought a MediaMVP. After getting through a few cockpit problems it has worked very well for playing mp3's and mpegs.

What I didn't anticipate when I bought the MediaMVP was an interest in playing video straight off the web. So I have added a graphics card with S-video out and a BRT wireless keyboard. This is working very well. The MediaMVP is no longer needed as much as I thought it would be.

I'm still very early in using GBPVR. I haven't purchased a capture card yet. So there might well be other considerations.

Mark