Hi everyone,

Now that my FE/BE system is running smoothly, I'm (almost) ready to throw all caution to the wind and hook up another front end. I need this in the kitchen for my wife, and I want it to be as inexpensive as possible. I see three options at the moment:

1) put a machine in the crawlspace under the kitchen or the unfinished attic above and run VGA cable to a monitor. Maybe I'd recycle an old box or maybe I'd get some closeout MOBO at Compusa and put it in a cheap case. Will this work with an onboard video card?

2) build a mini-ITX "carputer" and mount it in the corner of a cabinet and run VGA cable to a monitor.

For 1 and 2 above, could I do this diskless with a flash drive? How big a flash drive would I need (again this is frontend only)?

3) use a laptop as a front-end. Least desirable option because wifey is a bigtime cook and I'd rather she spill broth on a $50 keyboard than a laptop.

I have an RF keyboard/trackball combo (USB) that I'd like to use to control all this. I bring up USB because of the conflicts between USB inputs and Nvidia cards, so I'd just prefer to use regular VGA out.

All signals will be ATSC (mostly 480i though, like PBS Create, but some 720p and 1080i network broadcasts) and she'll watch a mix of live TV and recorded. I'd like to keep this as inexpensive as possible. Any and all thoughts appreciated. Thanks!

Any particular reason you're using a monitor? Just curious.

This is what I did. I purchased a VIA EN15000g. I am in the process of putting this system together as we speak.

The reason for a monitor is to better display text. My wife will be using firefox to look up recipes, and our little 9" tv that's there now probably won't display the small text legibly.

For sound, I'll either get a monitor with speakers or mount a couple of small speakers under the wall cabinet.

Regarding your Via system, are you going diskless? Are you using onboard graphics or a separate card? What is it costing you?

Please post back when its working to tell us how well its doing for you. Thanks!

What about one those PCs which have a PC built into the monitor?
As you are running a purely frontend system, you won't need expansion slots.

Bruce S.

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Thanks, I hadn't thought about that. But, I want to spend as little as possible too. These things seem to go for around $1000 - $1200. I really need to be under $300, preferably under $200

I can recycle a monitor from work to use as a display, so its really more about issues with the CPU box itself.

I have my VIA EN15000g up and running and it looks great in SD. It is almost a Tier 1 motherboard, but the installer fails. It's an easy fix though. Honestly I may 3 more of these boards and use them on the rest of my TVs.

I'm also interested in that board ... what was the issue/easy fix?

You say it need to be able to handle ATSC up to 1080i. That means your going to need some pretty serious horsepower. The going rate for decoding 1080i HD is a 3 GHz processor minimum. You could get away with less by using XVMC but you won't be able to use integrated graphics for that unless you get an Nvidia 6150 based board.

I'm just not sure your going to be able to build an HD capable kitchen system for $200.

I'd also be a little concerned about heat and moisture if placing a box in an attic / crawlspace.

Best of luck to you,

Martian

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Vizio 37" LCD HDTV (1080p)

@craigtv - This http://www.mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=14033&highlight=epia help me out, though it needs a little tweaking to fit my needs. I plan on writing a review and a "How I did it" later on tonight and tomorrow. Like I said, it's nothing major.

Thanks, that's info I need. In my area CBS and PBS-D broadcast in 1080i, so I need to have that covered. However, I don't need to display in HD, if that helps. My local Compusa is closing and the motherboards and CPU's are 30% off. If I put that in a cheap case or an old case from an unused computer, that might keep me around $200 if I install 512mb of RAM.

Also, I hope to go diskless and boot from a USB flash drive, they only cost $10-20.

I'm glad to hear XvMC will work with Nvidia 6150 onboard graphics, I recall seeing that on other mobo's. But I have to be prepared to go without XvMC because I can't afford USB conflicts.


Yes, I've though of that too. My crawlspace isn't bad, though I could put it in the laundry room and use a 30-50 foot run of VGA cable if necessary. The laundry room is physically close to my kitchen, just some concrete in the way. Well, off to Compusa to do some price checking...

Do you think this would do it:

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http://cgi.ebay.com/DELL-OPTIPLEX-GX270 ... 0093573844
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Thanks,
Steve[/url]

I've looking to build a FE only system based on this barebones system. I don't know if it would fit the OPs needs.