Come on, admit it...you're a tech geek!

Jizzon · Post by **Jizzon** » Wed Feb 23, 2005 3:21 am

Yeah, the P4s get plenty toasty. The newest batch (the 6XX series) have the same tech to drop voltage when not needed as the Centrinos to at least somewhat help; only time will tell if it really works. As far as OC's, someone cranked the P4 570J (3.8GHz) just over 7GHz and was able to run a system with it! Nuts. MonMotha, sorry for not clarifying about the SCSI interfaces. I know that SAS and SATA are interchangable on the SAS controllers (LSI's the only manufacturer I currently know of) and that those drives I mentioned won't work on them (alas). Currently I'm working on getting the things together to both fully output HD as source and component capture (think XBOX Live, all vidcapped, rawr)...so I need the upcoming Matrox Parhelia APVe, and...to bring my 32" HD Sony into my bedroom. Anyone interested on gaming socially, lemme know; I need to test the vidcap/camcorder setup in here. Next year, once the dual core HT Xeons are released (Dempsey is such a horrible name for a chip), I plan on making a video editing rig with two of them. Four hyperthreaded channels at a time, and 64 bit...numnumnum. Any thoughts?

Post by **MonMotha** » Wed Feb 23, 2005 10:54 pm

I just realized you'll also want a case. I've had great luck with Yeong Yang (Gigacase here in the US) cases in the past. The YY-W201 is on the recommended list for the K8W (non-E, the E has no recommendations currently).

Looks pretty good. Comes stock as a tower, but it can be reconfigured as a rackmount or "desktop" (horizontal) style case. Obviously there's some things that you can't really determine from specs and pictures. I don't know how the edges are finished. I've worked in cases before that have caused me more injuries than many of the more stupid electronics things I've done, but Yeong Yang tends to be decent.

You can also get hot swap SATA (and I assume SA-SCSI since they're electrically and physically compatible supposedly) cages for them preinstalled. I don't know how good the stock PSU is though; obviously don't skimp on that!

Jizzon · Post by **Jizzon** » Fri Feb 25, 2005 2:10 am

It's good you mentioned that, Brandon. What's your deuce on the WTX form factor? Really want a good case, and I don't care how big it is, so long as it's easy to work in, has good airflow, can accommodate two power supplies, and has like 20 drive cages d=

http://global.shuttle.com/Product/Barebone/SN25P.asp

Well before the workstation next year, I'm thinking of building a portable video crunch/capture system, hopefully soon...this with an Athlon 64 3500+ or so, a gig of low latency ram of some sort, and the Matrox Parhelia APVe when it comes out in about a month...prolly an HDTV tuner card in there too, along with two striped Raptors, a 16x Plextor DVD toaster, and the hard drive I have now as fatty storage (might upgrade to that lovely Maxtor 300GB with the 16MB cache tho, hmm, depends on budget). I love raises. AtomX, Ho, Rodent, Beuhler...what are your thoughts on a dedicated video box? Any help is greatly appreciated. I already have a breakout box for vidcap via FireWire, but does anyone know of any consumer to medium level HD or progressive component capture options? Everything I'm finding is like digital component or BNC connectors, aimed at much higher end stuff than I'm looking to do atm. Incidentally, I have a perfectly good working PC that I'm looking to sell for a good deal; PM me if you're interested.

Jizzon · Post by **Jizzon** » Sun Feb 27, 2005 11:49 pm

...ooooooorrrrrrrr not. My sense got the best of me, so I found an AGP card that can output HDTV resolution natively instead of upgrading everything. I don't really need the 3D overkill, but twin DVI outputs and that nifty HD dongle things makes for happies. With some of the money I saved I got an HDTV Wonder for multimedia goodness. Yippee. Next year comes the major upgrade then. So does anyone else out there have a home theater PC or desires for convergence? Or any better recommendations? Talk! d=

Post by **MonMotha** » Mon Feb 28, 2005 12:38 am

Heh, have I told you about my MythTV setup? I've actually got a system hooked up to the DLP right now via DVI. Driving it at its native 1280x720p@60Hz. It looks damn nice.

Unfortunately, I don't have my server at home right now (I'll bring it home at the beginning of the summer), so I can't actually use MythTV with it. I have a hi-def tuner card, and I've got it working with MythTV, but I can't get a decent signal in my dorm at Rose. I need a better antenna. I played around with it at home before I took it to Rose. It looked REALLY nice (as in TV was quite watchable on a 17" at 1920x1440 from a couple inches away).

MythTV also lets you slave several frontends (one for each TV) off a single backend. This lets you consolidate all your tuners and HD space into a single system. It's really pretty neat, and while the stability is sometimes questionable, I've been told it's no worse than Windows Media Center.

Basically, the only downside (for you, not for me) is that you'll have to run Linux on everything.

djfooboo · Post by **djfooboo** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 6:47 pm

[quote=Jizzon]So does anyone else out there have a home theater PC[/quote]

I am currently building one. Right now I am at a standstill because I cant paint my case as it isn't above 50 degrees yet. I actually have that video card you have a link to on my main rig. Performance divided by dollar you can't beat it. The BFG is about 50 dollars more than the others I've seen, but it has copper cooling, lifetime warranty, HDTV dongle, 2 monitor converters, and is out of the box overclocked (if you're into that sort of thing, I know I am).

Also about watercooling, it isn't about cooling potential, as high end air coolers outperform most water coolers, it's about silence. I use a thermaltake XP-90 with a high speed panaflo fan, and I get much lower temperatures than with a watercooled motherboard. And without water damage risk.

HDTV Wonder, look for Hauppauge tv tuners. I hear they are a lot better.

/compy dork

Post by **MonMotha** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 6:54 pm

As far as HD tuners go, there's apparently one called like Air2PC that has the advantage of being supported in both Windows and Linux (which is good if you like MythTV, because that doesn't run on Windows and seems to blow Windows Media Center out of the water). I have a Hauppage WinTV Go for my SD tuner and it works fine. Just your run-of-the-mill BT878 based card. If you'd like a little more kick, there's the PVR series with a hardware MPEG encoder, though many people have fine luck making up for that at SD (those cards can't do HD anyway) with raw processing power.

What I'm interested in is a Component/DVI HD capture card with hardware MPEG2 encoder (there isn't a PC in existance right now that can encode HD in real time, at least not and have it be watchable, in software) and that is supported in Linux. That would let me use HD digital cable. The other option I guess (and this would actually work better) would be to use IEEE1394 and run MPEG2-TS over it, which would just give you the raw MPEG2 stream as it's sent over the cable (just like the OTA HD tuners do).

Mr. Worm · Post by **Mr. Worm** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 11:01 pm

I love my iBook.

It's a G3, which means it's old, but it still gets the job done.
I think the school will let us buy 'em for $200, which I'll pay gladly.

As a graduation present, I hope to get a G5 iMac from my dad.

• 1GB DDR400 SDRAM - 2 DIMMs
• 160GB Serial ATA drive
• AirPort Extreme Card
• Keyboard and Mouse + Mac OS X - U.S. English
• 17-inch widescreen LCD
• 1.8GHz PowerPC G5
• SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra w/64MB video memory
(~$1,700)

That would kick so much ass.

Jizzon · Post by **Jizzon** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 12:11 am

MonMotha wrote:What I'm interested in is a Component/DVI HD capture card with hardware MPEG2 encoder (there isn't a PC in existance right now that can encode HD in real time, at least not and have it be watchable, in software) and that is supported in Linux. That would let me use HD digital cable. The other option I guess (and this would actually work better) would be to use IEEE1394 and run MPEG2-TS over it, which would just give you the raw MPEG2 stream as it's sent over the cable (just like the OTA HD tuners do).

The HOLO3DGRAPH-II Video Processing Card and HOLO3DGRAPH-II HDTV Aux Card look delicious with the quality you get, especially compared to the SDI/analog HD component converters with SDI HD encoders for about the same price. Any other takers, or rumors on consumer Y/Pb/Pr HD capture cards? Think within a year we'll start to see some for under $1K, along with the next-gen consoles that support Blu-Ray and/or HD DVD playback, consumer cams that do HD, and so on. HD's almost really here, folks.

Post by **MonMotha** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 12:30 am

Hum, looks very neat. Too bad there's no Linux support. Thing is, almost all HD stuff is delivered to you as MPEG2 anyway (it would be way to big to send uncompressed), and I'd like to save a recompression. The problem is that all the media giants are having a wet dream over the ability to restrict the use of stuff via encryption (and it has to get decrypted at some point, folks...) and various DRM methods, that I doubt there will ever be CableCard support under Linux, and using MPEG2-TS over IEEE1394 only works for the unencrypted channels (though that describes most of them around here, right now, or so I'm told), at least legally. Basically, I want to do what I'm legally allowed to do (until the DMCA came along and people started using cheesy encryption to hide behind the "Access controls" part) but that ABC/CBS/NBC/FOX execs don't want me do to (and yes, my HD tuner ignores the broadcast flag).

dancing queen iu · Post by **dancing queen iu** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 5:07 am

We've always been and always will be an Apple family. My family, I mean. We've always had Apples, never PCs, and it'll stay that way. At school I have an eMac G4. At home our computer system is tricked out beyond belief. My dad's technology-obsessed, I guess (I don't really give a shit), so like we have tons of insane shit. We have some super fast Airport Extreme wireless router with some plug in thing my dad got called AirTunes. So you like plug this ethernet cable or something into a wall socket that goes to your home stereo or something. I don't fucking know how it works, but somehow it lets you play iTunes on your home stereo. So that's my favorite thing about it.

Oh, and my stepmom's a filmographer, so we have like some super fast Power Mac G5 in the basement. I don't know, but it's like insane fast. I put Virtual PC 7 on it because I wanted to play some game and it runs like a 3.5 GhZ PC and has like 512 of ram. Saweet.

I don't know, I'm not that into tekkie stuff, really. I just want one computer and preferably high speed internet, although having dialup wouldn't be the end of me.

Mr. Worm · Post by **Mr. Worm** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 9:16 am

dancing queen iu wrote:We've always been and always will be an Apple family. My family, I mean. We've always had Apples, never PCs, and it'll stay that way. At school I have an eMac G4. At home our computer system is tricked out beyond belief. My dad's technology-obsessed, I guess (I don't really give a shit), so like we have tons of insane shit. We have some super fast Airport Extreme wireless router with some plug in thing my dad got called AirTunes. So you like plug this ethernet cable or something into a wall socket that goes to your home stereo or something. I don't fucking know how it works, but somehow it lets you play iTunes on your home stereo. So that's my favorite thing about it.

Oh, and my stepmom's a filmographer, so we have like some super fast Power Mac G5 in the basement. I don't know, but it's like insane fast. I put Virtual PC 7 on it because I wanted to play some game and it runs like a 3.5 GhZ PC and has like 512 of ram. Saweet.

I don't know, I'm not that into tekkie stuff, really. I just want one computer and preferably high speed internet, although having dialup wouldn't be the end of me.

Can I join your family?

(j/k XD)

But seriously, Macs are sweet, aren't they?

dancing queen iu · Post by **dancing queen iu** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 9:21 am

Mr. Worm wrote:
dancing queen iu wrote:We've always been and always will be an Apple family. My family, I mean. We've always had Apples, never PCs, and it'll stay that way. At school I have an eMac G4. At home our computer system is tricked out beyond belief. My dad's technology-obsessed, I guess (I don't really give a shit), so like we have tons of insane shit. We have some super fast Airport Extreme wireless router with some plug in thing my dad got called AirTunes. So you like plug this ethernet cable or something into a wall socket that goes to your home stereo or something. I don't fucking know how it works, but somehow it lets you play iTunes on your home stereo. So that's my favorite thing about it.

Oh, and my stepmom's a filmographer, so we have like some super fast Power Mac G5 in the basement. I don't know, but it's like insane fast. I put Virtual PC 7 on it because I wanted to play some game and it runs like a 3.5 GhZ PC and has like 512 of ram. Saweet.

I don't know, I'm not that into tekkie stuff, really. I just want one computer and preferably high speed internet, although having dialup wouldn't be the end of me.
Can I join your family?

(j/k XD)

But seriously, Macs are sweet, aren't they?

You can have my family.

Macs are much better quality machines than PCs. The problem with Macs is that you can't fuck with them as much, because so many of the components and software are proprietarily owned by Apple Corp. But since they aren't as popular as PCs, they seldom succumb to spyware or viruses.

sam · Post by **sam** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:33 pm

personally, i'd wait on a hdtv capture card. there's still too much legislation and bickering to have a set card that will work 3 years down the road.

plus, fuck the recording broadcast flag. wait for that to GO TO FUCKING HELL

hascoolnickname · Post by **hascoolnickname** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 5:41 pm

dancing queen iu wrote:
Mr. Worm wrote:
dancing queen iu wrote:We've always been and always will be an Apple family. My family, I mean. We've always had Apples, never PCs, and it'll stay that way. At school I have an eMac G4. At home our computer system is tricked out beyond belief. My dad's technology-obsessed, I guess (I don't really give a shit), so like we have tons of insane shit. We have some super fast Airport Extreme wireless router with some plug in thing my dad got called AirTunes. So you like plug this ethernet cable or something into a wall socket that goes to your home stereo or something. I don't fucking know how it works, but somehow it lets you play iTunes on your home stereo. So that's my favorite thing about it.

Oh, and my stepmom's a filmographer, so we have like some super fast Power Mac G5 in the basement. I don't know, but it's like insane fast. I put Virtual PC 7 on it because I wanted to play some game and it runs like a 3.5 GhZ PC and has like 512 of ram. Saweet.

I don't know, I'm not that into tekkie stuff, really. I just want one computer and preferably high speed internet, although having dialup wouldn't be the end of me.
Can I join your family?

(j/k XD)

But seriously, Macs are sweet, aren't they?
You can have my family.

Macs are much better quality machines than PCs. The problem with Macs is that you can't fuck with them as much, because so many of the components and software are proprietarily owned by Apple Corp. But since they aren't as popular as PCs, they seldom succumb to spyware or viruses.

actually you can do a lot of complex modding, instead of on a windoze box you can just be a n00b and throw shit in.