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...