Andrew Van Til

[babgvant]

I would recommend staying away from a system based on ancient hardware.  Given the budget I can understand the motivation, but you don’t need to shoot so low to achieve that.  Based on the requirements I’ve put together two sample systems – please note that this is very “back of the envelop” I put no effort into vetting the quality of the individual components (that said, mobo selection is probably the only thing I’d really worry about in the list).

SNB:

	Model	Cost
Case	Rosewill R379-M	$50
Board	ASRock H61M-GE LGA	$70
CPU	Intel Pentium G620	$78
dGPU	N/A	$0
RAM	G.SKILL NS 4GB (2 x 2GB)	$30
ODD	LITE-ON iHAS124-04	$19
PSU	N/A	$0
HD	WD Caviar Blue WD3200AAJS	$42
	Total	$289

Llano:

	Model	Cost
Case	Rosewill R379-M	$50
Board	ASRock A75M-HVS	$70
CPU	AMD A6-3650	120
dGPU	N/A	$0
RAM	G.SKILL NS 4GB (2 x 2GB)	$30
ODD	LITE-ON iHAS124-04	$19
PSU	N/A	$0
HD	WD Caviar Blue WD3200AAJS	$42
	Total	$331

[babgvant]

[quote=scarpenter002]

• Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive

[/quote]

Depending on the use case you may want to go with a faster hard drive.  Green drives are OK for single use w/ limited commercial scanning, but if you intend to do more than that a green drive may let you down.  I’ve been happiest with the WD Black drives but most 7200RPM drives with a decent amount of cache should do the job too.

[quote=scarpenter002]

• SilenX IXP-74-09 120mm Case Fan  (3 of these)

[/quote]

Given your build you won’t need this many fans – one is probably more than enough.

[babgvant]

[quote=mikinho]

You may also want to consider the Intel CIR + Remote (see http://cgi.ebay.com/IR-Receiver-w-Cable-CIR-MB-MCE-Back-Lit-Remote-/330581178980?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4cf82c7a64)

It offers some advantages over the generic USB IR Receivers as it doesn’t use a USB port and can power on from S5.

 

Edit: Ignore me…looks like Aaron and Andrew already recommened it

[/quote]

It’s worth mentioning again 🙂  I just ordered another one of these receivers, it’s too bad you can’t ala carte anymore.

[babgvant]

[quote=swoon]

EDIT: You could also use a PicoPSU. That would free up tons of room inside the case and take away any heat from the PSU.

[/quote]

Given the size and cooling capabilities of the chassis, I’m not sure a picoPSU is worth the cost.

[babgvant]

I have both tuners so trust me when I say that while the Hauppauge eHome IR receiver is decent, you’d be much happier with a Harmony + Duet + other IR receiver. 

Also, if you end up with one of the Intel boards Aaron mentioned you could use the CIR (which I found out recently supports discrete On) to do an internal IR mount.

[babgvant]

Either SNB CPU won’t tax the HSF enough to cause a noise problem so I’d run the retail cooler unless there was a problem. 

At idle and most use cases a 65W SNB based CPU is close enough to a 35W one in power usage that unless you are running in a constrained environment (or really don’t need the extra frequency) it may not be worth the additional cost for the lower wattage CPU.  There certainly are scenarios where the balance tips towards the “T”, but I don’t think that you’ll see it when opting for a case like the GD05B.

Other points:

1) Do you need the analog capture provided by the HVR-2250?  If not, the AverMedia Duet is a much better deal for the same feature set.

2) Get a bigger SSD (I know it’s already been said, but worth repeating)

3) With Lynx available, I think it is a better option than the older AMD IGPs.  But it’s important to keep in mind that they still have some driver issues to sort out on the platform.

[babgvant]

That’s a great price.  I have a 128GB V100 and it’s been really reliable.

[babgvant]

Hulu was created by content companies to help establish a legit online presence; so being able to make the deals isn’t anything special. 

I’m not saying that Google (or anyone else for that matter) wouldn’t benefit from buying a somewhat established player in the space, just that Google being Google might be an issue for point #1.  Because of YouTube and search Google has issues with content providers; it would be hard for them to negotiate for content when they are getting sued because of the same content – unless that’s the point.

 

[babgvant]

[quote=swoon]

As long as someone shows up with cash, I don’t believe content producers care that it is Google or Comcast. I’m sure they would love to sell to both.

[/quote]

If it was just about cash (or reasonable amounts of cash) and Google wanted the content, I’m not sure that Hulu adds anything to the mix.  They already have the infrastructure to deliver sub-standard internet video after all.

[babgvant]

I wonder if Google’s ownership would make it harder to make content deals. 

[babgvant]

[quote=pittsoccer33]

Will I be able to buy a cheaper Atom/Ion or Fusion board and get the experience I want out of it?  Or should I save myself headaches and just buy a i3 and motherboard?  I am still running a C2D and DDR2 ram in my living room. I’d like to stay with DDR2 ram since I have two 1GB sticks, but I realize this limits my options so I am open to whatever.

[/quote]

The Netflix HD experience will be very limited on these platforms until Silverlight supports GPU acceleration or Netflix transitions to a technology that does.

[babgvant]

[quote=umdivx]

Win7DSFilterTweaker

[/quote]

I’m not familiar with how that works exactly (it might just rename the DS wrapper MF source), but it doesn’t really disable MF.

[babgvant]

[quote=umdivx]

I don’t find that to be the case on my end as I have disabled Media Foundation on my system.

[/quote]

How did you disable MF?

[babgvant]

[quote=farscapesg1]

1) With previous versions (v6 and before) the metadata was contained in the wiz.bin file I believe.  So the key was to backup your config files on a regular basis.  I haven’t made the move to v7 yet, but my understanding (which could be wrong) is that they changed this to incorporate the metadata into the recording files themselves.

[/quote]

This is correct.  In v7 metadata is stored at the end of recorded TV files as well as in wiz.bin.

[babgvant]

I’ve never used a meter for calibration so I’m not the best resource for answering that question :).  Maybe Aaron can chime in, I think he has a similar model.

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