With respect to DVD playback and cable TV upscaling no problems. DVD looks great and TV looks great. Works well with Rotel learning remote...infrared keyboard keystrokes mimiced on learning remote.
PVR duties. Definitely will need to spec a faster machine as you have noted. Will follow your spec but since I really want a small format box, I will need to pay special attention to heat dissapation and energy consumption. So will need to rebuild a new box with higher specs. Current box will be a gift and do fine for my dads needs.
Didn't do DSCALER as a recommended viewer since the MSI TV@anywhere has the new Conexant chip and is not yet supported by DSCALER. But based on DCSLAR's own site comparison of WinDVD it is not far off. One good thing to note DSCALER can take plugins and such for special filters or other drivers of cards. DSCALER audio support is kinda finnicky. I think some people do a mix of DSCALER video capabilities with another programs driver that does sound. Sounds complicated so I have yet to try it. One thing to note with my setup. Some DVDs are great others have this horizontal scan lines showing on fast scenes. I have not yet discovered if it is the lack of horsepower. Using the built in 2d/3d video card with DVD motion compensation hardware chips. Or if the DVD recording was originally poor. I play the same DVD in an Asia market DVD with super error connection and do not get the scan lines in fast moving scenes. The Asia market DVD is not progressive. But most DVDs are excellent. I am only getting those scan lines from Asia market DVDs (which is suspect)
So software I use is the Intervideo WinDVD and the WinDVR. Its a no brainer (like me) and all the audio/video hookups and decoding work great and with ease. I know the DSCALER can give a slightly better picture but the interface can be difficult.
Since the box is small it has been a chore to set it up originally. I do not have the most petite of hands. The S/PDIF audio qualities on the onboard connector on the EPIA V version of the motherboard worked rather smoothly. I could not discernably hear a difference in sound quality over my standard DVD via coax digi. One positive note is that I could not believe the quality of downloaded MP3 that have been encoded at 256k or higher. I doubt that its playing at 256k but I was surprised that when feeding a digital signal of the MP3 it sounded awesome. I didn't realize that you coud feed the MP3 signal straight through the S/PDIF. I though it would pipe through the analog output of the speaker section. I only use the analog output for the TV tuner. Since TV cable is analog I do not know if it would be worth it or possible to convert the signal from analog to digital. Most of the smaller boxes come with proprietory power supplies which are all noisy. Small fans spinning fast with high pitched shreik. Had to disconnect the 12V fan and splice hard drive power connectors and figure out the 5V power leads. When all the fans were running 5V rather than 12v. They were spinnin slower but were almost dead silent. The air dissipation was good enough to get the hot air out of box generated by the hard drive, TV tuner card, VIA C3-933, EPIA V series mobo and the DVD rom.
The next box I will try to build is the S968L cube which can take P4 with 533 bus. It also now has 1 4x agp slot and and PCI slot in one small but boxy case.
I hope the power supply is not as loud as my current one. But its spec since it is a 150w could be underpowered (300w is minumum I'm thinking) and as noisy as my older box. Higher CPU and better video card will give me some issues with the small box. I have to be able to cool the thing without excessive noise. Since it will be front center with the rest of the audio pieces it also has to note WAF into consideration.
http://www.amselectronics.com/Products/PC_Servers/CF-968.html
my old box
http://www.amselectronics.com/Products/PC_Servers/CF-7989.html
This is a precursor to my projector purchase (which I thought the DVD player could easily do) which was brought up by you and Sushi and a few other individuals on this forum. Now I also need to to make up my mind with the Panny 300 or Sanyo PLV-Z1. The question I ask myself is $400 US is worth the upgrade to the Panny model. That $400 could be used toward a nice Mies Van Der Rohe leather listening chair.
Regards;
Saturn
