January 10, 2005

My Shuttle SN95G5

After months of dithering, I finally bought the PC-of-my-media-center dreams:

DSC00862.JPG

This box is going to eventually house my TV capture card, and run Linux and MythTV, serving all of my personal video recorder needs. The hardware:

  • Shuttle SN95G5 Case and Motherboard
  • AMD Athlon64 3000+
  • AOpen NVidia GeForce FX5200 128Mb AGP Video Card
  • 1Gb of Corsair value RAM
  • Seagate 200Gb Serial ATA HD
  • Sony Dual-Layer DVD-/+RW CD/DVD Burner

I know that it is way more power than I need for a simple PVR, but I want it to be fast when I crunch video down to Mpeg4. I also want to rip DVDs with it. And run Seti@Home or something (since it has to be on all the time anyway). So, I splurged a bit.

For right now, I've got Windows XP on it, because there are a couple of games that I want to play, and I wanted to inaugurate this computer in style by killing the heck out of Kevin in Urban Terror. Also, I don't have time to mess with Linux right now (see the bit about Urban Terror). But when I get back from Germany, it is going to be on.

Once again, the gallery is here.
-Andy.

Posted by andyr at January 10, 2005 12:15 AM
Comments

wow, quite a rig. it looks like you knocked me off the top as far as ridiclous hard drives go. (mine's only 160 gb)

if you're looking for distributes stuff, forget SETI, it's a total waste. grid.org and climateprediction.net are probably as good as it gets.

Posted by: Mark at January 10, 2005 9:04 AM

This is so sweet. This whole free PVR movement has taken off, and I didn't even notice it. I'm guessing it gets the TV schedules from the Net. Does it support stuff like DirectTV, or just simple analog cable, or what?

Do you get SVGA or DVI output from all of this, or do you have to use coax? Are you going to connect this to a flat panel monitor, a standard TV, or what?

Posted by: Carl at January 10, 2005 6:24 PM

I've been seeing reports out of CES about a 500Gb disk. Gawd.

-Andy.

Posted by: Andrew Reitz at January 10, 2005 9:36 PM

Carl,

Yes, the software does download TV scheduling information from the Internet. Right now, I am getting an XML feed from Zap2it Labs. Currently, the service is free. But it's not too hard to see them wanting a couple of bucks a month in the future (still way cheaper than Tivo's $13/mo).

I believe that in Europe at least, satellite is supported via a PCI capture card that understands satellite (DVB, I think it is called). I'm not aware of any such card for the 'states, so it would work just like if you bought a non-direcTivo and used it with DirecTV.

The graphics card that I bought has VGA, DVI, and S-Video outputs. Right now, I just have my good 'ole Sony 27" CRT, so I'm using S-Video. But, I am definitely eye-balling next-gen TV's, and I think I am well situated with my DVI port.

-Andy.

Posted by: Andrew Reitz at January 10, 2005 9:49 PM