Building PC for DVB-S2 and HD - Recommendations

[chc59]

Rather than trying to upgrade an older Dell 4550 PC, I'm planning to build a new PC from scratch for DVB/DVB-S2 and HD reception. Currently using a DVBWorld S2 pci card. Works OK for most HD stuff but is really being taxed. Looking for some suggestions on what components to get. I've done some reading thru the forums and come up with something like this to start:

Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX

CASE
hec Black 7K09 Micro ATX Media Center

CPU
MD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Brisbane 2.6GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2
65W Dual-Core Processor

RAM
2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual
Channel Kit Desktop Memory

DVD Burner
20X DVD±R DVD Burner SATA

HD drive
500GB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard

Appreciate the benefit of your experiences. I'm pretty sure that some of you have come up with some great and not too expensive setups.

Joe

 

[brentb636]

The system spec'd should be okay, I think. The biggest single thing is the ATI 3200 HD integrated graphics, which is roughly on a par with my ATI 2600HD card. The HD series does onboard decoding of the H.264 compression ( with the appropriate codecs) , relieving the cpu of a lot of pressure. I'm running a similar cpu ( albeit a 5600+, slightly overclocked) . Expect to have to do some tweaking of codecs to get it running smoothly.
The biggest problem is the lack of regular dvb-s2 HD programming on Ku band, so we can practice and tune.
Good luck,
-DVB setup
AMD Athlon dual core X2 5600+
ASUS mobo
2 GB ddr ram
ATI 2600HD XT 256 MB GDDR4
Genpix skywalker-1
TT s2-3200

 

[chc59]

Thanks for responding. Must be ok with my list because no one else chimed in with an opinion. Since my post, I also checked in on the AVSForum for some ideas. The motherboard and processor seem to be pretty popular with the HTPC crowd except those with deep pockets.

Joe