Brisbane POTN Coffee Club Rev. 4

last min stuff

Ok just anotehr friendly reminder to anyone online...

The Upper Brookfield DH round is tomorrow, 30 min drive from city.

practive starts at 8:00am Racing starts at 1pm

In two weeks there's the state champs at kenellworth(2hr drive) , and later in the year the 2nd of the 3 national rounds is at illinbah(1 hour drive)(if your a good photog, you could make cash selling your shots etc...)

You can get some info here:
http://www.twowheelpro​motions.com.au …task=view&id=44​&Itemid=54

I'll be racing as well as getting photo's, get one of me yeh!:p

Cheers
Jared.

Jared:. wrote in post #5940836
Ok just anotehr friendly reminder to anyone online...

The Upper Brookfield DH round is tomorrow, 30 min drive from city.

practive starts at 8:00am Racing starts at 1pm

In two weeks there's the state champs at kenellworth(2hr drive) , and later in the year the 2nd of the 3 national rounds is at illinbah(1 hour drive)(if your a good photog, you could make cash selling your shots etc...)

You can get some info here:
http://www.twowheelpro​motions.com.au …task=view&id=44​&Itemid=54

I'll be racing as well as getting photo's, get one of me yeh!:p

Cheers
Jared.

I've been interested in going to one of these meets but I've either been doing other things (like tomorrow) or they weren't anywhere local.

*rubs eyes*

Hi everyone, been out the last two days and last night now. Saw the Love Guru yesterday, and well, its carp. Waste of money, we nearly walked out it was that bad. On the other hand, The Dark Knight, awesome. Although they had a perfect chance to make a sequel, even without Heath and they shot themselves in the foot. Was a shame me thinks.

leitch wrote in post #5935015

Impressive. Very much so

Having fun so far?

Ok, to all the IT gurus out there... I need a little help with the potential build of a little HTPC to attach to my TV.

I have only started with the Asus mini tower barebone PC, and I assume that there are some minimum components that you need to add to make it a functional system, ie CPU, RAM & hard disk.

Can someone possibly give me some advice on the components selected below:

ASUS V3-M2A690G AMD 690G/ Skt. AM2/DualCore/ATI1250 (256MB)/PCIEx16/4X $139.00
Corsair DDR2 Twin2X 4096 6400C5 4Gb $112.00
Seagate SATAII 500GB 32m Cache $96.00
AMD Athlon™64 X2 4850e AM2 45w Energy Efficient CPU $99.00

The main bit i need advice on, is there anything else that I will need to make this system go?

I have built a few systems in my time, but they have always been full towers built as gaming machines. This time I am trying to build a decent spec media PC in a small box and as cheap as I can make it. I decided to put in a fair amount of RAM so that PS CS3 might run nicely too. I have not had much experience in cheaply built systems with integrated bits. Its been about 2 years since I built my last machine!

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

-Scott

Scott H wrote in post #5941109
The main bit i need advice on, is there anything else that I will need to make this system go?

Firstly, holy cow PC parts are cheap these days

Now, have you got a case to put it in and a power supply as well? Ive no idea if that mother board has on board graphics so you may need a graphics card. Even if it does have on board video, you would still be better off with a cheapy PCIe graphics card.

Maybe a wireless card for in the machine or just a wirless usb stick? That is assuming you have a wireless network at home. Could be useful for grabbing stuff off another machine or surfing the net from the couch (looking up movie details etc). Oh and a digital TV card for the pc. So you can watch and record TV through the computer. they arent too expensive these days and you can get USB stick ones like the one I have here for the lappy.

Scott H wrote in post #5941109
The main bit i need advice on, is there anything else that I will need to make this system go?

One (or more) Digital TV (DVB-T) cards. One for each simultaneous recording/viewing session you want to run. i.e. if you want to record one channel and watch another at the same time, you'll need two tuners (either a single, dual-tuner card, or two cards).

-spam- wrote in post #5941142
Firstly, holy cow PC parts are cheap these days

Now, have you got a case to put it in and a power supply as well? Ive no idea if that mother board has on board graphics so you may need a graphics card. Even if it does have on board video, you would still be better off with a cheapy PCIe graphics card.

Maybe a wireless card for in the machine or just a wirless usb stick? That is assuming you have a wireless network at home. Could be useful for grabbing stuff off another machine or surfing the net from the couch (looking up movie details etc). Oh and a digital TV card for the pc. So you can watch and record TV through the computer. they arent too expensive these days and you can get USB stick ones like the one I have here for the lappy.

Thanks for the quick reply. The Asus barebone pc come with PSU (i think), I believe it has integrated graphics (HDMI) which is what I need, so not really chasing a PCIe graphics card, has GB LAN (and will be positioned right next to my router) so no need for wireless ATM, digital TV is covered with 47" LCD and PVR it will be hooked up to.

The only thing I just remembered is an optical drive (just a cheapie DVDRW drive ~$30).

I think that should cover it mostly... Just for basic media, and the key ingredient is the HDMI for ease of compatibility with the LCD panel. The TV seems to have a whinge about doing 1920x1080 when using the D-sub cable. But it will do full HD from the STB or the DVD player on upscale.

Anyway... Total system cost so far is <$500 for a PC! and not a bad one at that... thats assuming that I havent missed something important

-Scott

EDIT: I have a Dvico Dual digital TV tuner card that I havent used in ages... its one that records and watches simultaneously. So if thats needed, I will plug that one in...

Scott H wrote in post #5941185
I think that should cover it mostly... Just for basic media, and the key ingredient is the HDMI for ease of compatibility with the LCD panel. The TV seems to have a whinge about doing 1920x1080 when using the D-sub cable. But it will do full HD from the STB or the DVD player on upscale.

Interesting comment about the whinging from the TV. is it definitely a 1080p panel?

Remember that TV (FTA) is only broadcast in 1080i which will run fine on a 720p compatible panel.

In saying that, my dell monitor hates using D-Sub to run 1920x1080 too. you should have much better luck with HDMI.

In terms of PCs... I'm not really up with it when it comes to AMD. I don't tend to touch AMDs at the moment... I was looking at building a C2D based HT box, but am far too lazy...

wakko wrote in post #5941289
Interesting comment about the whinging from the TV. is it definitely a 1080p panel?

Remember that TV (FTA) is only broadcast in 1080i which will run fine on a 720p compatible panel.

In saying that, my dell monitor hates using D-Sub to run 1920x1080 too. you should have much better luck with HDMI.

In terms of PCs... I'm not really up with it when it comes to AMD. I don't tend to touch AMDs at the moment... I was looking at building a C2D based HT box, but am far too lazy...

Hey Feng, thanks for getting back to me. I bought the TV quite a while ago, and when I bought it, it was described as a 1080 panel. Without doing a whole lot of research, I bought it, and the first time I tried a 1080p signal on it it didnt work! So I believe its only a 1080i panel. But 1080 nonetheless.

Yeah... so its a little wierd. Using the D-sub cable was strange to say the least. It would kind of support higher resolutions (best I could get it to go to was 1600x1050 or something like that.) but it would have to pan around... Stupid thing. So If I can just give it a HDMI input for simplicity it would likely be the solution.

Cheers,

-Scott

EDIT: I would prefer to build a C2Q/ C2D box but this was the only one that had HDMI integrated... What sort of system did you come up with?

I will talk to you guys in the morning, I am buggered.

Thanks for the info so far guys. Appreciated.

-Scott

Scott H wrote in post #5941355
Hey Feng, thanks for getting back to me. I bought the TV quite a while ago, and when I bought it, it was described as a 1080 panel. Without doing a whole lot of research, I bought it, and the first time I tried a 1080p signal on it it didnt work! So I believe its only a 1080i panel. But 1080 nonetheless.

Yeah... so its a little wierd. Using the D-sub cable was strange to say the least. It would kind of support higher resolutions (best I could get it to go to was 1600x1050 or something like that.) but it would have to pan around... Stupid thing. So If I can just give it a HDMI input for simplicity it would likely be the solution.

Cheers,

-Scott

EDIT: I would prefer to build a C2Q/ C2D box but this was the only one that had HDMI integrated... What sort of system did you come up with?

I'm pretty sure 1080i panels won't do a 1920 x 1080 vertical res natively... I may be wrong though?

C2D is more than enough for a HT box. Quad would be a bit of overkill. I think if you're going to be watching HD rips then they say it's safer to get something which is at least E6600 or better type speeds.... though I know many people who can run x264 encoded HD rips on less than that.

I haven't ended up with any system yet.... as since we moved house, I haven't had time for anything.

leitch wrote in post #5940752
Here we go, guys https://photography-on-the.net …php?p=5940750#p​ost5940750

David, when are you and Flav heading to Italia?

Just over 7 weeks to go!!

Like those linked shots, BTW, esp of spiral staircase. V nice.

Hi guys, some tax from yesterday.

No.1 Old Bridge Pier

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Greg_C wrote in post #5943454
Hi guys, some tax from yesterday.

No.1 Old Bridge Pier
No.2 Let there be Light
No.3 Flower
No.4 Cotton Harlequin Bug
No.5 Dusky City
No.6 City Nights
No.7

Nice, Greg - the Harly bug turned out well. I was going to text you to let you know the light was falling when I left, but figured you see it yourself soon enough. I like the evening/night shots, too. Add those to the ones you took in the morning of the PMA and you'll have a day-long series!

wakko wrote in post #5941388
C2D is more than enough for a HT box. Quad would be a bit of overkill. I think if you're going to be watching HD rips then they say it's safer to get something which is at least E6600 or better type speeds.... though I know many people who can run x264 encoded HD rips on less than that.

I'm running a 2.4Ghz Socket 473 (?) Celeron on my media box. The DVB-T/MPEG-2 card does a good job of offloading video decoding from the CPU.

Greg_C wrote in post #5943454
Hi guys, some tax from yesterday.

Oooh, nice. I didn't get anything particularly fantastic at the Samford Show yesterday, and am crook today so I'm not going to the strobist meet. (damn cold/flu thing).