Is it grunty enough?

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Jonski

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Topic # 30078 28-Jan-2009 12:36

I've just taken posession of a nice Panasonic 42" plasma, Freeview built in, and my little old HTPC is in need of a tart up. I call it a HTPC only because that's what I intended for it, but it never lived up to the hype.

To wit: I've got an IBM 8148 7DM (About) and I want it to record Freeview DVB-T. I'm looking for a PCI decoder card that does all the work itself as I'm sure the CPU on this PC will otherwise croak under the load.

But should I bother? Is this old IBM gonna suck completely? I don't want to get a card, find out that it doesn't work as expected, upgrade the PC and find that the PCI card is better replaced with PCI-E?

I've seen people comment that decoding TV3's 1080i is a job for Superman. Is this true and I should just start over? If so, for the price (now $999) why not just get the Zinwell PVR? How much would a DIY equivalent cost?

All thoughts appreciated.

Cheers
Jon

EDIT: I've got a PCI DirectX 9 video card in the PC (Geforce, IIRC), hopefully this helps a bit...

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sbiddle

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Reply # 192467 28-Jan-2009 13:02

That PC is now powerful enough for software decoding.

There is no such thing as a "PCI decoder card" for DVB-T (or DVB-S). All digital tuner cards do is pass the transport stream through to the PC for decoding. The PC then needs to decode the MPEG2 or MPEG4/H.264 stream either via software or GFX card that does the decoding.

Reastically a new system really is the only choice if you want Freeview|HD.

ajst2duk

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Master Geek

Reply # 192504 28-Jan-2009 15:03

sbiddle:
That PC is now powerful enough for software decoding.
Reastically a new system really is the only choice if you want Freeview|HD.

Think he meant: That PC is NOT powerful enough for software decoding

I agree, you will need another solution, your main limitation there is the fact that you appear to have no upgrade path for your video output, the on-board one will just not cut it. Specs list only 2 PCI 2.2 slots.