Re: [Freevo-users] What hardware to buy?
On Fri, Sep 26, 2003 at 02:00:21PM -0400, Shane Crosby wrote: > Hi, > > Pentium 4 2GHz > 256MB RAM > What are your suggestions for TV Card, Video Out card, DVD Drive, RS232 > remote, and anything else I'll need? I have created a very cheap freevo box based on a Celeron 350MHz, with 256Mb ram I use a cheap ATI card (~45 euro) for TV out (composite, not S-Video) but I am pretty happy with it (my TV is also low quality) you need though to install XFree86 server 3.0 (Debian fortunately has it in experimental) and the Nvidia propertary driver (the free one does not have 3D acceleration and TV out) (and read the instruction for setting the XF86config) I can play games: tuxkart, tuxracer and even chromium are quite smooth when I play DVD it skips some frames when the camera is panning or zooming: the Nvidia package contains a library for XV motion conpensation, but it seems that Xine does not use it; nontheless the quality is good the ATI card has a big plus that I did not ever see in other cards: it enables TV-out at boot, so that you can see everything on TV; my freevo box is below my TV , and I manage it using only the TV (not computer monitor attached): BIOS, O.S. ... everything is on TV. And the text on the TV-out is quite readable. Only catch: I cannot use the kernel framebuffer for displaying fancy text resolutions and fonts: only standard vga works. no tv card... sorry (it would cost more than all the rest together!) my DVD is an LG: it is noisy at full speed, but quite silent when freevo runs it slower > Also, will 256MB be enough memory? for me, it is; and I do not use swap > My ideal setup will be a machine with remote control, DVD playback support > and a huge Mp3 collection mounted over samba. samba? a. -- Andrea Mennucc "E' un mondo difficile. Che vita intensa!" (Tonino Carotone) --- This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek Welcome to geek heaven. http://thinkgeek.com/sf ___ Freevo-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users
RE: [Freevo-users] What hardware to buy?
I use a pentium III 866 with 128 meg of ram. 1 20 gig drive and 1 120 gig drive (smaller drive is os/apps) nvidia geforce 2 with TV out ATI tv Wonder VE (but any bt878 based tv card will work) all of this in a rack mount ATX case (I have all my AV equipment rackmounted) CDrom drive... el-cheapo version this allows me to record as divx, use the freevo box as my house's media server for mp3's and shows recorded. PLUS as my main CD ripper in the home. works great, it makes my freevo owning friends jealous. you CANT watch a recorded video while it is recording but that really is not an issue, and watching tv while recording is as simple as using the tv+cable box instead of using freevo to watch tv. basically I wanted a digital VCR, and freevo gave it to me. I also am sure there is enough processing power in there to serve my personal webpages and run misterhouse for home automation at the same time (although increasing ram would be a good idea at that point.) I use a custom-installed version of slackware for the OS install and I do NOT run any window manager (but i do run X for now... I think that the nvidia can run TV out in framebuffer without anything special...) --- This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek Welcome to geek heaven. http://thinkgeek.com/sf ___ Freevo-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users
Re: [Freevo-users] What hardware to buy?
> > >Also, will 256MB be enough memory? > > > > I think so, I have an old K6-2 350 Mhz with 192 MB :-( but it's OK for > > audio and photos and the Freevo menu's work OK (I have neither DVD nor > > TV tuner working yet) > > I used Freevo on a Celeron 400 with 256mb of RAM and it was pretty > good, including TV encoding. I've moved to a faster machine, but it's > fine to work with any amount of RAM, though Python will probably gain > some speed from more. When we built a Freevo box for our corridor (swedish dorm, or whatever they're called) we rounded up some hardware and ended up with a Celeron 433MHz on 32Mb (!) of RAM. Played everything I tried, up to high-bitrate xvid files. The same box actually plays DVDs, although de-interlacing is not an option. Or recording. =) --- This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek Welcome to geek heaven. http://thinkgeek.com/sf ___ Freevo-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users
Re: [Freevo-users] What hardware to buy?
On Sat, Sep 27, 2003 at 02:56:06AM +, Jorn A Hansen wrote: > With your CPU I don't think you will need a card with MPEG encoding like > the PVR250. Get something with good driver support (a bt8x8 card > supported by the bttv drivers) The advantage of the new PVR350 cards is both excellent hardware encoding with 0% CPU, and they have a framebuffer output driver so you can use it for input and output though I've never tested it. I have a Athlon 2000XP, and the hardware encoding is still worth it, especially since it takes all the headache out of audio synchronization and background recording. > I got an ATI All In Wonder Radeon that I got for approx. 50$. I heard > some rumours that at least some time ago ATI had better TV out quality > than NVidia. A lot of the Freevo developers have Matrox G400 which > therefore is well supported but more expensive than my card at least > where I live. The G400 is great, I would look into the PVR350 if I was in the market today, since it does provide hardware decoding of MPEG2, TV Output and as far as I know, a complete framebuffer, unlike the DXR3 which involves encoding the Freevo interface into mpeg. > >DVD Drive, Anything will do. > >RS232 remote, > > You can either build your own receiver for most standard remotes or buy > a TV Card with one included. It should be supported by LIRC. See > http://freevo.sourceforge.net/hardware.html which also contains bits of > hints about the other parts. The IRMAN is dead simple to get going if you're not comfortable with electronics. > >and anything else I'll need? > Soundcard? Or maybe your on-board is sufficient? If you're playing DVDs, you need to get some sort of card with optical out... if your onboard has it, make sure it's supported. > >Also, will 256MB be enough memory? > > I think so, I have an old K6-2 350 Mhz with 192 MB :-( but it's OK for > audio and photos and the Freevo menu's work OK (I have neither DVD nor > TV tuner working yet) I used Freevo on a Celeron 400 with 256mb of RAM and it was pretty good, including TV encoding. I've moved to a faster machine, but it's fine to work with any amount of RAM, though Python will probably gain some speed from more. --- This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek Welcome to geek heaven. http://thinkgeek.com/sf ___ Freevo-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users
Re: [Freevo-users] What hardware to buy?
Shane Crosby wrote: Pentium 4 2GHz 256MB RAM That's it. So this machine is essentially an empty canvas for me to work with. What I would like to do is build the best possible freevo for the lowest possible price. Generally take a look at the Supported Hardware section on http://freevo.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/DocumentationPage What are your suggestions for TV Card, With your CPU I don't think you will need a card with MPEG encoding like the PVR250. Get something with good driver support (a bt8x8 card supported by the bttv drivers) Video Out card, I got an ATI All In Wonder Radeon that I got for approx. 50$. I heard some rumours that at least some time ago ATI had better TV out quality than NVidia. A lot of the Freevo developers have Matrox G400 which therefore is well supported but more expensive than my card at least where I live. DVD Drive, ? RS232 remote, You can either build your own receiver for most standard remotes or buy a TV Card with one included. It should be supported by LIRC. See http://freevo.sourceforge.net/hardware.html which also contains bits of hints about the other parts. and anything else I'll need? Soundcard? Or maybe your on-board is sufficient? Also, will 256MB be enough memory? I think so, I have an old K6-2 350 Mhz with 192 MB :-( but it's OK for audio and photos and the Freevo menu's work OK (I have neither DVD nor TV tuner working yet) My ideal setup will be a machine with remote control, DVD playback support and a huge Mp3 collection mounted over samba. Thanks in advance! I'm looking forward to building this as soon as I can afford the parts. You can always start by adding the part you need the most and then add stuff along the way - that's my approach :-) JornH --- This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek Welcome to geek heaven. http://thinkgeek.com/sf ___ Freevo-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users
Re: [Freevo-users] What hardware to buy?
I have an media box featuring a xp1800 (or 1900 I dont remember) which I have actually underclocked. I will not be doing any transcoding on this box. It sports 512 mb ram and a compact flash 32mb card used via an ide adaptor. This contains the kernel and boot loader, everything else is pulled from a file server. I use a Matrox Marvel G400 for tvout usinf DirectFB. My sound card is an RME DIGI 96/8 PAD. For IR I'm using an IRMAN. I have successfully used this box to play audio and video files. I have ripped audio but only outside of freevo as yet. I am not currently looking at video recording, but have ripped dvd s without transcoding (again outside of freevo) I have a file server for all media which uses NFS rather than SAAMBA. It contains an 1TB Raid5 array and uses a 1.3ghz celleron to provide software raid5. I wanted a lot of space as I'm looking for very high quality media. I will not be using lossy audio compression and at the moment am storing dvd as mpeg2 rather than Divx. This is a pretty long answer to your question, but the thing is everyone does it differently. It depends on your budget, aims and the comproises you are prepared to make. I strongly suggest you make your choices carefully. Think about noise, price, heat and long term goals. If you will have a file server I suggest you think about net booting. I think one of my best decisions was to make the media box diskless. Mark On Fri, 26 Sep 2003 14:00:21 -0400 "Shane Crosby" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > > I've been wanting to build a freevo for a while, and I've finally secured a > machine to dedicate to it. > > So far it has: > > Pentium 4 2GHz > 256MB RAM > > That's it. So this machine is essentially an empty canvas for me to work > with. What I would like to do is build the best possible freevo for the > lowest possible price. > > The machine will be outfitted with a 160GB drive. > > What are your suggestions for TV Card, Video Out card, DVD Drive, RS232 > remote, and anything else I'll need? > > Also, will 256MB be enough memory? > > My ideal setup will be a machine with remote control, DVD playback support > and a huge Mp3 collection mounted over samba. > > Thanks in advance! I'm looking forward to building this as soon as I can > afford the parts. > > _ > Add MSN 8 Internet Software to your existing Internet access and enjoy > patented spam protection and more. Sign up now! > http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/byoa > > > > --- > This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek > Welcome to geek heaven. > http://thinkgeek.com/sf > ___ > Freevo-users mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users --- This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek Welcome to geek heaven. http://thinkgeek.com/sf ___ Freevo-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users
[Freevo-users] What hardware to buy?
Hi, I've been wanting to build a freevo for a while, and I've finally secured a machine to dedicate to it. So far it has: Pentium 4 2GHz 256MB RAM That's it. So this machine is essentially an empty canvas for me to work with. What I would like to do is build the best possible freevo for the lowest possible price. The machine will be outfitted with a 160GB drive. What are your suggestions for TV Card, Video Out card, DVD Drive, RS232 remote, and anything else I'll need? Also, will 256MB be enough memory? My ideal setup will be a machine with remote control, DVD playback support and a huge Mp3 collection mounted over samba. Thanks in advance! I'm looking forward to building this as soon as I can afford the parts. _ Add MSN 8 Internet Software to your existing Internet access and enjoy patented spam protection and more. Sign up now! http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/byoa --- This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek Welcome to geek heaven. http://thinkgeek.com/sf ___ Freevo-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users
