I have a new Samsung 46" LCD HDTV. I want to build a home theater PC with a TV listing driven DVR. What is a good, cost effective setup?

The part I am most struggling with is the tuner / video card(s) selection. Is the DVICO FusionHDTV5 RT Gold a good choice for a tuner card? If so, what would be a good choice for video card and what would be the connections and protocols used?

I don't explicitly see "1920x1080" specs on video cards. Which commonly available cards will drive a HDTV? Some specs show TV output processing (with a lower resolution than computer monitor). Is this just for the s-video port? Do I need TV processing if I am using a 15 pin VGA port? Would my LCD HDTV act like a computer monitor or does it still need a "TV type of signal"?

S-Video: is this analog or digital? will it drive HDTV?
15 pin VGA: is this analog or digital? will it drive HDTV?
DVI: obviously digital and HDTV, but isn't this only on the lastest / greatest / most expensive cards?

Thanks, John

MythTV. Software cost is $0.

The tuner cards you want will depend on what you want to record. I only do OTA ATSC, so I use the old Air2PC Rev 02 cards you can get on ebay for under $20. I've got 6 of them in my system.

For MythTV I'd stick with Nvidia 6200 or better, although I'm happy with the output of the FX5200, Gforce 6100, and 6150 for my 3 boxes.

I use vga to my monitor on one system. Vga to to my HDTV, and S-video to my old analog TV. VGA works great for HDTV. S-video won't do HD. Never even messed with DVI or HDMI. Haven't found a need to yet.

I have a dvico 5 lite and it works fine in myth, but the only reason I have it is because that's a dual box window, and dvico at the time was one of the few cards that did QAM in windows.

If you want analog - PVR-150, or similar
If you want ATSC only - Air2PC work fine as mentioned above for cost
If you want QAM - Kworld atsc 110/115s and avermedia A180s work well for me Bought all for less than $30-$50 new and used. i have 5 of them. They also do ATSC, and Kworld do NTSC, but not hardware encoding.

There are many others, but that's would I'd go with for cost. PCI slots were an issue and I wanted dual tuners for QAM or ATSC I'd look into the HDhomerun. I also use firewire to record many channels straight from my DCT-6200.


I hook my 6150 up to my HDTV DVI-D->HDMI with good results, and my 6200 to my other HDTV via VGA, and it works great as well. Stick with nvidia for Linux. my sets aren't 1080p, but others have gotten 1920x1080p out of these cards.

VGA is analog. DVI-D is digital. DVI-A is analog (won't find this most likely) and DVI-I is both digital and analog. VGA is usually the easiest to configure (if you TV accepts this as an input) and gives me great quality.

What kind of signal are you looking to tune? How many tuners do you want?

Thanks for the info.

I plan to use just 1 tuner, over-the-air DTV, HD when avail.

It looks like there are plenty of options.

I will look for the tuner feature that will power on/off the computer.

I'll get a nvidia 6200 or better and use the VGA. Easy enough, thanks!

John

Good luck. Be sure to check what refresh rates and resolutions your TV supports via VGA. Should be in your manual.