H
hardergm
Guest
Folks
I have Topfield PVR and it is brilliant albeit getting long in the tooth and
would like to replicate its functionality and more in a appropriately
provisioned workstation. Given that the Intel Penryn Quad core processors
are now available, and the price of 1TB HDDs are falling, its time to jump
into a a media centre workstation (I also want to use it for normal computing
functions (Office, Project, Visio etc). I'd like to use Vista in its 64 bit
mode to overcome the addressing limitations.
I am in Australia and we use PAL-B as the television standard and have a
myriad of standards for what is called Standard definitiona nd high
definition digital TV.
I want to use the Intel Q9450 or Q9550 processors for plenty of grunt and
headroom - the rest is a greenfield site.
I'm looking for recommendations for motherboards that are best suited to the
processors and media centre (and to future proof as much as possible);
RAIDed terrabyte HDDs - OK on the motherboard or better to have a separate
controller; Graphics cards (not a gamer but want good output from the media
centre); TV cards (the Topfield can record two channels and playback another
at the same time - it'd be nice to be able to record more channels than the
two (out here programs never run according to the published schedule!) - it
that now possible given the extra processing power of the Quad core
processors; and any other recommendations that you'd like to make.
I'm also interested in any othe potential 'gotchas' that I should be looking
out for - drivers seem to be the thing that scares most people off
Looking forward to the collective wisdom
Cheers
Geoff
I have Topfield PVR and it is brilliant albeit getting long in the tooth and
would like to replicate its functionality and more in a appropriately
provisioned workstation. Given that the Intel Penryn Quad core processors
are now available, and the price of 1TB HDDs are falling, its time to jump
into a a media centre workstation (I also want to use it for normal computing
functions (Office, Project, Visio etc). I'd like to use Vista in its 64 bit
mode to overcome the addressing limitations.
I am in Australia and we use PAL-B as the television standard and have a
myriad of standards for what is called Standard definitiona nd high
definition digital TV.
I want to use the Intel Q9450 or Q9550 processors for plenty of grunt and
headroom - the rest is a greenfield site.
I'm looking for recommendations for motherboards that are best suited to the
processors and media centre (and to future proof as much as possible);
RAIDed terrabyte HDDs - OK on the motherboard or better to have a separate
controller; Graphics cards (not a gamer but want good output from the media
centre); TV cards (the Topfield can record two channels and playback another
at the same time - it'd be nice to be able to record more channels than the
two (out here programs never run according to the published schedule!) - it
that now possible given the extra processing power of the Quad core
processors; and any other recommendations that you'd like to make.
I'm also interested in any othe potential 'gotchas' that I should be looking
out for - drivers seem to be the thing that scares most people off
Looking forward to the collective wisdom
Cheers
Geoff