Spec me a budget HD media PC plz!

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Would like a media pc to go attach to my plasma so I can play Hi-Def stuff from it on the panel. As cheap as possible would be great, but I do understand that playing HD stuff needs a bit of grunt! Thanks!
 
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Where are getting the hd stuff from?

The only way to get it in a media centre pc is via satelite i think, so you would need a dish and a card.
 
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There's plenty of legit stuff out there such as HD trailers, samples from M$ and I have a sony hdr-hc3 which I can shoot my own 1080i stuff on (one hell of a cam btw!). There are dedicated newsgroups which carry masses of HD aswell, although some of their copyright material may be a grey area and is open to possible legal question and an issue I would leave to yourself to debate!
 
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Look into a 3000+ and Nvidia 6150 at the very least, these cope with HD. What's the native rez of your Plasma panel?

1GB RAM, big HD, quiet PSU (Seasonic), passive motherboard.
 
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There's plenty of legit stuff out there such as HD trailers, samples from M$
I thought you were looking for perminant hd tv channels, sorry. I downloaded a sample from ms and it just about runs on my pm 1.7 laptop.
I'm looking at getting a similar thing, and i've heard that the 6150 struggles with hd.

If your interested this was my first spec:

-Case: Antec NSK2400 Case (inc psu) £58
-Motherboard: ASUS M2NPV-VM NF430 £57
-CPU: AMD Sempron 64 2800+ Socket AM2 £32
-Ram: 512MB Corsair Value Select, DDR2 533 £27
-DVD reader/burner: LG GSA-H10NBAL Black £22
-Tv card: Terratec 2400i DT MCE Edition £70
-Graphics: Onboard (DVI and hdtv out)
-Sound: Onboard 5.1
-Harddisk: HGST 250gb £54 [3gb/hour]
-Network: Onboard wired, Netgear wireless.
-Remote Ms MCE remote £24
-Misc (postage etc) £15

Total: £359

Now i think i have decided to avoid the terratec card as its got buggy drivers, and i might get a graphics cards and a board without onboard graphics. I was intending to clock the 2800 up a bit as i've found semprons overclock like hell.
 
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I'm looking at getting a similar thing, and i've heard that the 6150 struggles with hd.

Nope, copes fine. But I would fit a faster CPU than that Sempron. Fit 1GB, only a few more quid and worthwhile onboard GFX uses system memory (deduct 64MB)
 
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As i said, that sempron will probably overclock to 3200 speeds with stock volts if its anything like the 745 ones. And the 754 one never got hotter than 38 with the stock cooler even when overclocked by 200mhz.
So i reckon that a sempron 2800+ could do 3500 speeds, a 400mhz increase no bother. Although perhaps better to get a 3000+ with extra cache an overclock it to 3600+ speeds.
That would be fast enough wouldn't it?

Although now that A64s are so cheap getting one of them might be better.
 
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I guess, but my Asus MATX doesn't OC very well. I would buy a 3700+ OEM and a quiet HSF. HD 1080P material is around 85% CPU max usage, if I recall correctly, 65-75% average.

My HTPC is a 3700+, Asus 6150, 1GB. Not overclocked.
 
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Whats the board like, in the way of bios and overclocking options?

I'm on a £500 budget for the whole thing including £100 of tv card, so i'll get dual core and ideally a low end core 2 if i can afford it, but i probably can't.

As there aren't really any hd tv channels anyway there isn't much point tho. By the time we get hdtv over freeview i'll probably need a new tv card with an mpeg4 decoder anyway.
 
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Whats the board like, in the way of bios and overclocking options?

Asus A8N-VM CSM- Pretty limited, don't think I could get it more than 300mhz OC. Value RAM. Doesn't have near as many OC options like the one in my sig. .

As you said, by the time everything is HD and slow down looking at a new rig anyway. But 1080P plays fine, so 730P which'll be more common.
 
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