Waiting to pull trigger on a Ceton setup

[foxwood]

I'm not sure what you mean here, Foxwood. Nothing prevents you from pulling the Ceton tuner out of one PC and installing it in a different one. The CableCARD is not tied to the PC... it's tied to the tuner. However, if the OP has recorded some copy-protected shows on his i7 PC, he will not be able to transfer those recordings to his new i5 PC.

I thought he was following up to my response to "extending" Live TV (one of those posts you didn't read ).

You're right though, taking the hardware from one machine to another machine shouldn't cause any problems.

[docluv01]

Thanks a lot guys!

QUestion.....If I decided not to go with extenders, but use the mini-pc I have strictly for watching TV via WMC....would the following specs be good enough for HD tv via the Infiniti4 cableCARD tuner?

NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 520M GPU (512MB)
• Intel® Atom™ D2700 CPU (2.13 GHz, dual-core)
• Intel® NM10 Express chipset
4 GB RAM

Display Outputs
• HDMI (1080p w/8-channel audio)
• HDCP compliant
• VGA (with DVI-to-VGA adapter)
• NVIDIA® nView® multi-display technology

Features
• NVIDIA® PureVideo™ HD technology
• NVIDIA® CUDA™ technology
• Adobe® Flash® Player 10.1 acceleration
• Microsoft® DirectX® 11 compatible
• Microsoft® DirectCompute ready
• OpenGL® 4.1 compatible
• OpenCL compatible

[werds]

I just want to add a quick note that I think has been answered to some degree already. Whenever I am transcoding or conducting any business on my HTPC that grabs all of the CPU to do so, the extenders get remarkably slow and or nonresponsive. The main WMC though still functions although a tad bit slower. For the most part you don't need a lot of horsepower for an HTPC but the more things you add in terms of functionality outside of just connected to the tv and serving up HTPC goodness, the more incremental horsepower can be a good thing (I have contemplated a few times getting an i7 setup for my HTPC, but overall have been happy with my i3)

[docluv01]

I just want to add a quick note that I think has been answered to some degree already. Whenever I am transcoding or conducting any business on my HTPC that grabs all of the CPU to do so, the extenders get remarkably slow and or nonresponsive. The main WMC though still functions although a tad bit slower. For the most part you don't need a lot of horsepower for an HTPC but the more things you add in terms of functionality outside of just connected to the tv and serving up HTPC goodness, the more incremental horsepower can be a good thing (I have contemplated a few times getting an i7 setup for my HTPC, but overall have been happy with my i3)

Yeah, thats why I am contemplating just using a dedicated HTPC just for WMC. I have a zotac ID80 mini pc. I put spec above, do u think it would be ok? for 1080i HD content via cablecard?

[werds]

I just want to add a quick note that I think has been answered to some degree already. Whenever I am transcoding or conducting any business on my HTPC that grabs all of the CPU to do so, the extenders get remarkably slow and or nonresponsive. The main WMC though still functions although a tad bit slower. For the most part you don't need a lot of horsepower for an HTPC but the more things you add in terms of functionality outside of just connected to the tv and serving up HTPC goodness, the more incremental horsepower can be a good thing (I have contemplated a few times getting an i7 setup for my HTPC, but overall have been happy with my i3)

Yeah, thats why I am contemplating just using a dedicated HTPC just for WMC. I have a zotac ID80 mini pc. I put spec above, do u think it would be ok? for 1080i HD content via cablecard?

Well, I have a netbook which I use for on the road WMC stuff that has an AMD C-50 Dual core. It plays all things including 1080p with no problem. But anything that becomes cpu dependent can get a little slow. The menu changes and all can be a little painful at times even when I had an SSD installed in it. But once you get any local or networked content started it is great.

So short answer, yes that equipment should be enough to do just basic stuff and for a lot of people it is perfect. For me I ended up going from low powered to my i3 setup with an ssd drive for OS and the WAF improved greatly because the majority of the lag and response dissipated.

[docluv01]

Yeah, this pc is going to be dedicated for JUST Cable TV using teh cablecard, for HD programming.

The pc is a dual core 2.14. I really like the WMC DVR interface....

SO if its recording content from 3 tuners, and I'm watching a baseball game on teh 4th, I shouldn't see any hinderance in response time etc?

I just want to add a quick note that I think has been answered to some degree already. Whenever I am transcoding or conducting any business on my HTPC that grabs all of the CPU to do so, the extenders get remarkably slow and or nonresponsive. The main WMC though still functions although a tad bit slower. For the most part you don't need a lot of horsepower for an HTPC but the more things you add in terms of functionality outside of just connected to the tv and serving up HTPC goodness, the more incremental horsepower can be a good thing (I have contemplated a few times getting an i7 setup for my HTPC, but overall have been happy with my i3)

Yeah, thats why I am contemplating just using a dedicated HTPC just for WMC. I have a zotac ID80 mini pc. I put spec above, do u think it would be ok? for 1080i HD content via cablecard?

Well, I have a netbook which I use for on the road WMC stuff that has an AMD C-50 Dual core. It plays all things including 1080p with no problem. But anything that becomes cpu dependent can get a little slow. The menu changes and all can be a little painful at times even when I had an SSD installed in it. But once you get any local or networked content started it is great.

So short answer, yes that equipment should be enough to do just basic stuff and for a lot of people it is perfect. For me I ended up going from low powered to my i3 setup with an ssd drive for OS and the WAF improved greatly because the majority of the lag and response dissipated.

[werds]

Nope, not at all. Especially if that is all you will be doing. As mentioned before the aspect of recording and tuning takes very little CPU power.

Yeah, this pc is going to be dedicated for JUST Cable TV using teh cablecard, for HD programming.

The pc is a dual core 2.14. I really like the WMC DVR interface....

SO if its recording content from 3 tuners, and I'm watching a baseball game on teh 4th, I shouldn't see any hinderance in response time etc?

[docluv01]

Ok, not to get a little greedy, but I also have an older mini pc also, with the following specs:

NVIDIA® ION™ graphics processor
Intel Atom 330 (1.6 GHz, dual-core)
2GB DDR2-800 (dual-channel)
160GB 5400RPM HDD
HDMI (w/7.1-channel digital audio)
NVIDIA® nView™ multi-display (up to 2 monitors)
HDCP ready

Do you think this could handle the same scenario? Using all 4 tuners at same time for HD content? I know recording doesnt take much CPU....but recording 3, and watching a HD ball game?

(I may need to plug in an external Sata....)

Nope, not at all. Especially if that is all you will be doing. As mentioned before the aspect of recording and tuning takes very little CPU power.

Yeah, this pc is going to be dedicated for JUST Cable TV using teh cablecard, for HD programming.

The pc is a dual core 2.14. I really like the WMC DVR interface....

SO if its recording content from 3 tuners, and I'm watching a baseball game on teh 4th, I shouldn't see any hinderance in response time etc?

[foxwood]

(I have contemplated a few times getting an i7 setup for my HTPC, but overall have been happy with my i3)

You'd still see the same slowdowns, but they wouldn't last as long, because Handbrake would finish faster, and stop hogging the system.