Hi Everyone,
I’m new to Missing Remote, and new to the whole HTPC thing. I’m an avid gamer and have been building my own gaming PCs for years now.
But with my wife and I losing one to many season finales to our not-so-faithful Comcast DVR, the WAF is soaring high, and I am ready to build my very own HTPC.
I have money to burn, and a decent Home Theatre setup right now. I can’t use my InFocus Projector, or my high-end speakers because they would simply dominate the apartment we are currently renting. But I do have a nice 5.1 system with a 50″ plasma.
So, I’d like to record all of the HD channels available to me on Comcast. That means SciFi HD, Discovery HD, etc. And if tomorrow, I buy ShowTime so I can watch Dexter, then I want to record ShowTime too. I’d also liketo play my HD-DVD movies (yes I bought the XBOX 360 HD-DVD player) and Blu-Ray movies. And all of our music too.
I was going to go with Hauppaugge’s HD-PVR ([url=http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html]http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html[/url]), which is cool, but it only captures the output of the Comcast tuner. So that means it can’t record one show while I watch another. Ick 🙁
Then I heard about Tivo HD. I can’t seem to get a good read on this. Some people seem to love it, others not so much. Also, I get the feeling that if I bought the Tivo HD, what would be the need to build an HTPC, except for the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray movie options. And I really want to build an HTPC while the wife is handing out the cash 🙂
So does the following setup make sense to everyone? Is it overkill? Or just right?
[list]
[*]Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L mobo (I found it in in my office, completely brand new and unopened…go figure
[*]Either an E8400 ($178 at TankGuys.com) or a Q6600 (around $220)
[*]an EVGA 320-P2-N811-AR GeForce 8800GTS at $150 (though the ATI Radeon 34xx are considerably cheaper)
[*]LG Blu-ray/HD DVD-ROM for $200
[*]a couple of 640GB WD AAKS drives that are super fast
[*]Silverstone LC17 case for $120[/list:u]
Also, all of this must be routed through component cables because I bought a Zektor component/optical cable switcher ([url=http://zektor.com/hds41/index.html]http://zektor.com/hds41/index.html[/url]).
So, it is another one of those threads (sorry :-[). Should I go the Tivo HD route? Are those parts above good, overkill, or not even adequate?
Thanks in advance everyone!!
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