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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > The HTPC Thread - Dont buy an HTPC
 
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Mister Biff
Dec 26, 2006

 I've always wanted to build a HTPC, but the only hardware I've got lying around is a G4 Mac tower.

Therefore, a few questions:
  • Am I correct in assuming that MythTV is my only option? I'm not new to linux by any means, but I've never come across any outstanding Mac OS products in my travels.
  • If the MythTV/Linux thing is the way to go, are there even any internal video capture cards for the Mac? I did a quick Google search, and only came up with some external POS made by Hauppauge.
  • Lastly, assuming this is all well and good, is it even worth it to use hardware that's lying around my house? Or should I just scrap this notion until I have a few hundred bucks to sink into this project to do it "the right way"

:ninja: Edit: The Mac is a dual-867Mhz w/1 GB of RAM. HDD is irrelevant because that's cheap.

* # ¿ Mar 22, 2007 21:00
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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 10:59
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Mister Biff
Dec 26, 2006

WhyteRyce posted:

Doesn't VLC use it's own internal decoders for playback?

It does for most content (like WMV), but I think it relies on outside codecs for some formats.

* # ¿ Mar 22, 2007 21:02
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Mister Biff
Dec 26, 2006

Juriko posted:

They have some videos of linux MCE out there, and it is what you would expect from a linux media center. Overly complicated, to many features and lovely UI. It honestly has one of the worst UI's I have seen in a media center app, and I have seen a lot. It suffers from "use every square inch of the screen" syndrome and shows no design cohesion.

Seriously, feature wise it seems awesome, but function wise it seems unusable. Lord forbid someone that isn't a serious user has to handle it because I am pretty sure they would die from overload.

Which package was this?

I've seen some screens of MythTV, and they didn't strike me as that at all.

:colbert:

* # ¿ Mar 23, 2007 01:21
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Mister Biff
Dec 26, 2006

 Does anybody have any HDD recommendations? What brands to stay away from, what's not worth the money, etc. I'll probably be using SATA, for what it's worth.

* # ¿ Apr 8, 2007 13:16
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > The HTPC Thread - Dont buy an HTPC