A low cost, home entertainment PC??

andykjones

Distinguished
May 20, 2003
1
0
18,510
OK so who's a home entertainment guru?

I've had a PC attached to my entertainment system for years now but a) I'm sick of the noise, and b) I want to increase it's functionality.

I'm wanting to make it more than just the MP3 player it currently is, adding DVR (digital video recording), DVD player, DIVX player and on TV internet browsing.

So what I want is an ultra quiet system (so both the PC cooler & power supply need to be low noise), a low profile case, with high quality TV out (preferably svideo & RCA), digital audio out (optical or coax) (for MP3s, DTS & Dolby), a card with DVR functionality, Ethernet, USB & firewire. Problem is I don't want to pay much for it! ;-)

I've been working on specing up a system based on the VIA EPIA 10000 M Mini ITX system board, but think this requires just too many compromises. Price wise the system comes out great at around $900AU ($450US??) but has a number of limitations.
a) it only has one PCI slot which will be taken up by the TV DVR card
b) the coax digital SP/DIF port is shared by the RCA video out. As my current TV doesn't have an Svideo port, that means I have to use the port for video, and so no digital out :-(. As there is only no spare PCI, I can't use a sound card that would give me digital out.
c)If I use the component 5.1 out, the Mic/linein port is shared with the sub and center channel, so no Mic/linein!! Line in is normally used by TV capture cards so :-(
d)Many of the reviews I've read complain of poor performance of these mother boards.

So, my question is, what are my best options?? One of the mini-atx boards?? Have I missed something in my assumptions??

One option I had concidered was using a 1-2 PCI riser card but haven't found a low noise case which would allow this.

Any suggestions on motherboards/CPUs, cases, DVR cards, and sound cards would be appreciated.
 

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
I'd suggest at least a Micro ATX board. Well, you can run a more powerfull video card and use PCI slot 1 for mounting a large passive cooler on it. Newegg has a variety of small desktop cases designed to look good in a home theater rack.

I'd suggest staying away from half height slots all together, as the added height of a full sized slot can still allow for small cases.

Tell you what, I have a nice Tualatin combo here that can run passively cooled, would you like me to build you a system? It would be FULL ATX but the case I have in mind is tightly wrapped around that form factor, so it's only about the size of a full sized home reciever (or one of those 100-disk CD carosels).

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>