[kevmarks]

Well I have been researching a home theater pc (HTPC) for a few days and this is my list of parts that I plan to use.

Duron 1Ghz (allready have it laying around)

SK6 (again allready have it)

Motherboard, what ever looks good in the newegg refurb dept. ($50)
Speed is not important, this macine will just play divx movies. KT133?

IDE software raid card if motherboard did not come with one ($20?)

2x120gb WD 1200BB hard disks to store all those divx movies on.
(will pull these out of my main rig and replace them with barracuda 7's $250)

NIC - allready have

black desktop case ($50, cosmetics not important)

52x black lite-on cd-rom (allready have)

256 meg PC2100 ($40 or less)

Matrox G450 ($20 ebay)

wireless keyboard (allready have)

Soundcard (allready have)

Total project cost $420. I may try and source some of the components from ebay, case motherboard etc. So I should be able to get the whole project down under $400. Also getting a hard drive upgrade included.

Will the G450 boot straight to the TV out? I don't want to connect a monitor to this machine. I need to be able to switch it on and it be on the TV.

This machine will also run mame and snes9x on the tv. OMG!!!! I will post pics when the project get underway. Probobally when I get back from Europe in May. this will be my summer project .

[Shade00]

I'm not sure if any G450's ever came with a TV-out on-board, but if you're talking about using the TV-adaptor cable, then it'll most likely work. The cable simply converts VGA to TV-out.

[kevmarks]

thanks for the swift reply. I am really looking forward to building my movie juke box . I think I can sope out a much cheaper m/b and case on ebay. The only real expense is going to be the hard drives.

[Supertrucker]

if it were me, i would burn the movies to disk, that always worked better for me and would save a tone on the hdds. also, you might consider a shuttle box, they run around 320 i think for a socket a box but it is a case ps mobo video and audio on an nf2 board i think it even has tv out on the integrated video or has a agp slot if that interests you, might be worth the cash just for the smaller size case. just a though

[Avatar28]

I'd probably get a DVDROM instead of a CDROM. They're not much more and that would give you the ability to also play DVDs on it if you wanted to. Or to rip the DVDs that you OWN directly to that machine. Even if it's slow, it doesn't really matter as long as you're not needing to watch a movie while it's going.

[kevmarks]

I have nearly 100gb of movies scatted around my rigs. Burning them all to cd is a bit a nightmare. Not to mention the 2 or 3 cones of movies I have laying around. I would burn them all to CD but they get lost, lent out to friends etc.

My dream is to have them all on one big array along with my mp3's. I think I will put the dvd player in there. Not because I can play dvd's on it but it's much quiter than the cd-rom I have. A dvd player will be sitting right ontop of this rig

I guess it's going to be a file server with benefits.