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**uberlad** · 22 June 2005, 06:27

Another point in Nebula's favour - they appear to already support TopupTV through an external CAM and some third party DLLs. They promise an integrated system in the nearish future. Still no sign of a Twinham solution for this in the UK.

Nebula is still pretty damned expensive, though.

Uberlad

**uberlad** · 22 June 2005, 07:02

aha! I have discovered the reason for the high price of the Nebula card. the software is absolutely tip top according to a quick googling. As I'm doing this experiment with MCE as the interface it seems to make sense to get the cheaper Twinham card.

Another decision made.

Now. Remotes.

Updates to follow on the likelihood that I'll be using a microsoft remote.

Uberlad

**uberlad** · 22 June 2005, 11:29

Decisions, decisions.....

Remote Wonder - Radio remote, requires hacking about with MCE to make it work

MS remote - Only IR, _has_ to be plugged in when you install the OS.

It's tricky.

Uberlad

**Fat Tone** · 22 June 2005, 11:36

Well if you go the Nebula route you have the following advantages:

Top-notch s/w
comes with own universal remote - no need to choose another.
No need for an MCE license
leading quality chipset
You can stream any channel from the current bouquet across your network - so Freeview is available on any PC in your house.

Aparently there are recent MCE drivers for the Nebula, but they aren't 100% yet

**Fluff** · 22 June 2005, 11:49

And in future the software will play mp3's and watch dvd's. All through the remote.

Still waiting for 3.5 of the drivers.

They are also releasing slave tuners so you can record one channel and watch another at the same time

Just wished there were more DAB stations available on DVB-T.

**uberlad** · 22 June 2005, 15:32

I can get a Twinham card + MCE + Remote for Â£140. this will allow me to watch tv, movies, divx etc etc but possibly nor tv on other machines on the network (not looked into that yet). I can get another card and watch two channels at once. Or even record two channels at once

The nebula card is Â£120 and I technically still need to buy Windows XP on top and wait for a new version of the software that does everything that I want it to do.

As I'm buying now I think the Twinham is the way to go. Of course once I've lived with MCE for a few weeks I may think differently.....

Hope to get final parts list thrown together by the weekend - then I just need to find the money and argue with people about why I'm not getting expensive RAM 8-)

thanks for the lively debate on this guys, I@ll keep you all posted.

Uberlad

**uberlad** · 23 June 2005, 06:23

Ok. Here's the rough parts list along with delivered prices:

Antec Aria Case Â£72.69
Sempron 2800 S754 Â£54.38
Gigabyte K8VM800M Â£41.09
512Mb PC3200 Â£24.97
Segate 200GB SATA HD Â£68.13
Liteon DVD-RW Â£31.96
Radeon 9550 SE Â£37.44
MS Wireless Keyboard / mouse Â£25.02
TV Card + MCE + Remote Â£139.83

All in _and_ legitimate for under Â£500. Just.

I can chop a few quid off by getting a wired keyboard + mouse or not bothering with a DVD burner and just getting a DVD-ROM. Using a 'long term evaluation' copy of XP MCE knocks another Â£50 off.

What do we think? I considered for about 10 seconds a Pentium M uAtx board. Then I saw prices of both boards and processors.

I sense that a credit card will be getting a nasty shock in a few days

Uberlad

**Fat Tone** · 23 June 2005, 06:46

Questions questions:

Which case exactly - got a link?
What CPU fan?
Why the 9550 -cos the mobo doesn't have TV-out?
If so why not choose a mobo that does, and digital audio out?

**uberlad** · 23 June 2005, 07:49

http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=15130 - it leaves me enough spare expansion space for an extra tuner and a wireless card.

I'm going to start it off with the OEM heatsink / fan. If that sounds too loud then I'll see what fits in the case. Recent Zalmans seem to fit ok in reviews.

Forgot to mention before that I'm plugging it into my LCD TV through the DVI. Whoops.

The 9550 is pretty much the cheapest card that has DVI out but might still run some winamp visualisations at 'pretty' settings. May well be overkill. (edit) Also, of course, it's passively cooled, keeping the fan count down. (/edit)

Reviews of the Mobo tell me that it comes with a SP-DIF plug for the header pins. I wish that more people made uAtx mobos with DVI ports but the only one I could find didn't have the expansion possibilies (miniITX P4) or cost Â£160(Pentium M board)

Uberlad

**Maggi** · 23 June 2005, 08:41

awesome resource ... http://www.dvbsoft.net/

I found ProgDVB the best overall app and the list of available plugins is overwhelming

ProgDVB home page

http://www.progdvb.com/

I personally use a Hauppauge DVB-s (Rev. 1.3) and aside from it's incompatibility to HDTV broadcast, it serves me well for over 5 years now and due to its design, it does MPEG2 decoding and CSA in hardware ...

must-have tool when recording DVB streams for authoring onto DVD / (X)S-VCD

404 Not Found

http://www.offeryn.de/dv.htm

one of the best freeware MPEG2 editing apps (cutting the source data without recompression):

Mpeg2Schnitt 0.9.4 Download Free - VideoHelp

http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=Mpeg2Schnitt

Mpeg2Schnitt is a MPEG2 video editor. Requires demultiplexed/splitted video and audio streams, demux MPGs with tmpgenc->mpeg tools or ProjectX.

feel free to PM me, if you're interested in details ...

**uberlad** · 24 June 2005, 02:04

Disaster!

I have entrirely failed to notice that PCNextDay have not actually had any stock of the Twinham bundle all week.

Either I need to wait until they get stock or go with a different card and use the Buccaneer version of XP MCE.

Ah well, it should give me time to make sure that I'd made all the right hardware choices. Possibly also more time for investigating the possibilities of MythTV and other media centre Linux distros.

Maggi - I'll have a trawl thourgh your link over the weekend, see if there are fine windows alternatives also.

Looks like this thread is just going to turn into a PW++ one for me

Uberlad

**Maggi** · 24 June 2005, 03:03

Originally posted by uberlad

Maggi - I'll have a trawl thourgh your link over the weekend, see if there are fine windows alternatives also.

Yo Uberlad ...

ProgDVB supports the following cards directly
- Aver DVB-S
- BroadLogic 2030/1030
- GeniaTech DigiStar DVB-S PCI
- Kworld DVB-S 100 compatible (Vstream, Dynavision..... )
- ADS Tech - Instant TV DVB-S (Part Number: PTV-341)
- LifeView FlyDVB
- Netcast DVB
- Pinnacle PCTV Sat (driver >=260)
- Nexus,Premium (SkyStar1) (the driver 2.x from TechnoTrend)
- Sky Star 2 USB or PCI (the driver 4.22 and is higher)
- Telemann Skymedia 300 DVB (not official)
- TwinHan compatible (VisionDTV,Power Color,INCA Digital Tv,Chaintech,...)
- WinTV NOVA (Budget) USB or PCI

additional cards support
http://www.dvbsoft.net/download.php?list.24

loads of plugins for streaming/broadcast server/client, PiP, CI, remote control, EPG etc
http://www.dvbsoft.net/download.php?list.23

AC3 plugins
http://www.dvbsoft.net/download.php?list.27

funny plugins for educational purposes
http://www.dvbsoft.net/download.php?list.29

They also have a small Linux section with tools that you won't everywhere
http://www.dvbsoft.net/download.php?list.33

There's so much more I could throw into the ring, but I'll stop it for now, just drop me a note, if you need a hand ...

**uberlad** · 24 June 2005, 04:21

Wow! that's a hell of a list.

I am going to have to do some googling in order to check how well progDVB handles UK freeview (DVB-T) transmissions as I think from what I've read that it was originally designed for digital satellite.

My main requirement is going to be a nicely integrated interface so as not to overly scare the girlfriend. I need to be able to play DVDs, AVIs, MP3s and TV all through the same interface which is why XP MCE appealed.

I'll download and have a look at progDVB over the weekend. the'educational' modules do look very interesting

.

Uberlad

**Maggi** · 24 June 2005, 04:32

ProgDVB is multipurpose, you can even install it on a PC that doesn't have any DVB card at all, so that you could watch the network broadcasted TV stream from your HTPC on any machine in your network ...

hmmm ... I didn't notice you're heading for DVB-t ... no idea if that's supported by ProgDVB

is there no chance for you to go satellite ?

reason I ask is the lack of quality and programms when being bound to terrestrial reception, here in Germany DVB-t sux rox (mildly spoken) and the usual bitrate is as low as 2-3Mbit/s, whereas satellite usually hovers between 4-6 Mbit, depending on the provider and programm.

Btw, as a side effect of those modules, I could watch quite a few UK stations via Astra and once I take the plunge and add a 2nd LNB, I'd be tapping Eutelsat as well, resulting in a total of a few hundred TV stations plus countless radiostations

**uberlad** · 24 June 2005, 06:30

We're stuck with freeview DVB-T for the moment. It's a new house and we need to get settled before I start suggesting 6' satllite dishes in the garden

Im hoping that whatever interface I go for will have the ability for me to add a new card at a future date, either to allow two channels of freeview showing at once, or one freeview and one satellite.

If I was going to try Linux it looks like the WinTV Nova-T is the way to go as all the example installs for MythTV use one of those. I need to check XP MCE support I suppose. I could try a dual boot for the first few weeks until I decided on which platform and package to use. Although as we approach the move I think ym fiddling time may be significantly reduced.

Can anyone see a huge hole or problem in the hardware spec before I get too bogged down in OS choices?

Uberlad

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