Is the MSI Media Live still a good hybrid?

[geekyhawkes]

I have been fully sold on MCE by the video but really feel that a hybrid will best meet my needs.  I have been through the Wiki over the past few weeks and apart from some old hardware am pretty impressed with how far the project has come!  The question I have is if you were setting up a hybrid system would you still spend the cash on the slightly older MSI Media Live or look at a rebuild with newer hardware?

Thanks for any help!

[patmankn]

geekyhawkes,

i'm running on the MSI Media Liv Mainboard myself. I still think it's not to bad. So if you can get a good deal with it, why not! ;O)
BUT...First i just use the internal NIC for the DSL-line and plugged in a Intel GBit NIC for the internal stuff. Second I'm using an Nvidia 7300GT 512MB graphic card, as i was hoping to get rid of the tearing. The internal card is ...ok, but not perfect. Newer boards, with newer chipsets might could perform better Nvida VPDAU, once its being set up in LMCE... but this is some sound of the future.

so... again, i like the MSI Live as a hybrid... especially for the beginning.
Later on, maybe i like a board with MORE PCI-(E) stuff, more SATA  and MDs that come in a smaller Formfactor...

Any Questions left`? ;O)

Pat

[totallymaxed]

I have been fully sold on MCE by the video but really feel that a hybrid will best meet my needs.  I have been through the Wiki over the past few weeks and apart from some old hardware am pretty impressed with how far the project has come!  The question I have is if you were setting up a hybrid system would you still spend the cash on the slightly older MSI Media Live or look at a rebuild with newer hardware?

Thanks for any help!

If you can find a good price on an MSI-MediaLive and take the approach that patmankn took then I agree its still a nice package. Its compact for an all-in-one, looks good in a living area and has a good spread of I/O etc.

All the best

Andrew

[geekyhawkes]

Thanks for the quick reply guys.  I am not sure what you are classing as a good price, most of the barebones MSI Live boxes i can find are around the £260 price, which doesnt seem to bad albeit a barebones setup.  As far as adding the extra NIC can i keep a PCI slot free by using a wifi USB dongle?  I am very keen to get a twin tuner Digital TV PCI card in my setup.

Thanks for the advise on the 7300GT, how is that card under MCE? 

Once again thanks for the advice;

Andy

[geekyhawkes]

My other option is to spec/build something myself.  I have been playing around with specs roughly like the following, but would be grateful of some feedback;

Components
Processor
1 x ATHLON 64 X2 5200+ 2.7GHZ PIB SKT AM2 2X512KB F...    £39.21            Fast enough?
Motherboard
1 x M3N78 PRO AM2+ GF8300 ATX VGA+SND+GLN+1394+U2 H...    £51.04            Wiki says its compatible
Memory
1 x Kingston HyperX 2GB PC2-6400 800MHz DDR2-SDRAM ...    £17.97            Fast enough?
Graphics Card
1 x EN9500GT/DI/512MD3 512MB DDR3 PCI-E DVI-I HDMI ...    £43.58            Any idea if this card will work?
Optical Drive
1 x Pioneer 5x BluRay DVDRW Combo    £57.96
Hard Disk
1 x Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA 32MB Cach...    £62.24

Case wise im thinking if i go this route myself i will go for a silverstone LC20 with some sort of 520W powersupply.  I guess what im asking is am i better to go for the MSI or this self spec'd machine as the cost will be pretty similar

[patmankn]

My other option is to spec/build something myself.  I have been playing around with specs roughly like the following, but would be grateful of some feedback;

Components
Processor
1 x ATHLON 64 X2 5200+ 2.7GHZ PIB SKT AM2 2X512KB F...    £39.21            Fast enough?

i would go for the 4850, as it is less Energy consuming. As for HD without VDpau, u still need a quick machine.
My Athlon BE-2400 sucks at this, at it seems to bee to slow. In the Forum are some attemps with coreAVC (try the search functionality ;O) ) in which i couldn't succeed. Kepp in mind to have a proper cooling with HOT Hardware!

Motherboard
1 x M3N78 PRO AM2+ GF8300 ATX VGA+SND+GLN+1394+U2 H...    £51.04            Wiki says its compatible

Check the Forum for this Board. There should be some HUGE threads about it...

Memory
1 x Kingston HyperX 2GB PC2-6400 800MHz DDR2-SDRAM ...    £17.97            Fast enough?

Who cares much about Memory anymore, as long as there is enough and your machine is not i7-ish ! ;O)
Just spend ur machine like 2-4gb, everything should be fine... Myself went for Kingston, as they usually just work, nothing else...

Graphics Card
1 x EN9500GT/DI/512MD3 512MB DDR3 PCI-E DVI-I HDMI ...    £43.58            Any idea if this card will work?

No bloody idea, but check out the mythtv forum for the compatibility of vdpau and the supported graphic cards. They are getting more and more. I guess, a 9xxx card should but a good choice, but please check the forum, as there used to be some issues with with 8x, 9x cards, their drivers and 7.10...

Optical Drive
1 x Pioneer 5x BluRay DVDRW Combo    £57.96

Pfee.. no idea. No need for BR yet... but i guess it should be P&P

Hard Disk
1 x Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA 32MB Cach...    £62.24

I just love the new WD drives. I got some with just 16mb cache (not that i could feel that). quite, quick... nice price.

Case wise im thinking if i go this route myself i will go for a silverstone LC20 with some sort of 520W powersupply.  I guess what im asking is am i better to go for the MSI or this self spec'd machine as the cost will be pretty similar

I just have my nice Antec p150 next to my TV... just little WAF, but not ready for a silverstone yet ;O)
But i guess, there is not much that can go wrong with such a case.
Big plans are, just to have a small MD in the "future-Living-room"... small case = big WAF, rite?

Well MSI ML? New one?... Hardware support is getting really awesome with linux. Well, as i bought my MSI in Jan last years, i do not see the need for a new board. But the new stuff looks really nice. I guess i would go for the new Hardware and make it work... so .. have fun! ;O)
Once upon a time, when LMCE will work with the new Ubuntu releases, HW should be an issue anymore. But 7.10 is still picky, and 8.10alpha is still hard to manage for a "user"...

Yours,

Pat

P.S: My tip for playing around with different versions: get yourself several hardrives. 160Gb ~ 30Eur (40USD/GBP?) should do the trick...

[totallymaxed]

My other option is to spec/build something myself.  I have been playing around with specs roughly like the following, but would be grateful of some feedback;

Components
Processor
1 x ATHLON 64 X2 5200+ 2.7GHZ PIB SKT AM2 2X512KB F...    £39.21            Fast enough?
Motherboard
1 x M3N78 PRO AM2+ GF8300 ATX VGA+SND+GLN+1394+U2 H...    £51.04            Wiki says its compatible
Memory
1 x Kingston HyperX 2GB PC2-6400 800MHz DDR2-SDRAM ...    £17.97            Fast enough?
Graphics Card
1 x EN9500GT/DI/512MD3 512MB DDR3 PCI-E DVI-I HDMI ...    £43.58            Any idea if this card will work?
Optical Drive
1 x Pioneer 5x BluRay DVDRW Combo    £57.96
Hard Disk
1 x Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA 32MB Cach...    £62.24

Case wise im thinking if i go this route myself i will go for a silverstone LC20 with some sort of 520W powersupply.  I guess what im asking is am i better to go for the MSI or this self spec'd machine as the cost will be pretty similar

A couple of comments;

- We often use nVidia 9400GT's so I would expect the a 9500GT to be a reasonable bet.
- I would not bother with the BluRay drive right now to be frank...just get yourself a DVD-RW drive for aboutr a third of the price.
- If your looking for DVB-T then I'd look at the Kworld Dual DVB-T USB as it uses none of your PCI slots up. See my Wiki article on getting this working (with link to our v4l pkg to get it working); http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Kworld_KW-DVB-T_399U

All the best

Andrew

[geekyhawkes]

Thanks for the replies guys.  All seems to be taking me away from the msi to move towards a more up to date setup!  Interesting info from a bluray point of view, it does  seem an easy way to keep the cost of the system down.  As far as processors go, when the hell did people stop giving the clock speed against the product?  All these daft amd names for processors give you no idea (as far as I can work out!) on clock speed! (Rant over!)

[Viking]

Hi,

the mainboard has got an onboad GF 8300 - so why add an EN9500GT ?

Maybe there is trouble with the 8300 that I don't know about ... (I don't have this mainboard myself but I am looking for a replacement for my MD in the living room that has tearings )

Please post your results - especially if you have got tearings or not

Greetings
Viking

[patmankn]

Any Questions left`? ;O)

Can I ask one too? 
I am looking for a lightweight solution to provide sound and vision in my living room, where I still have a CRT television with SCART connections. Doesn't this board provide component video out that can be cabled into SCART? Does this output work without too much hassle for you (or anyone else)?
Thanks so much,
Mark

Well it depends on buying the MSI Media Live Barebone or just the Mainboard http://wiki.linuxmce.com/index.php/MSI_MS-7329
The MB itself just comes with HDMI(DVI), VGA, component. The Barebone comes with additional SCART und composite and other stuff: http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=proddesc&maincat_no=134&prod_no=1113 .
I ordered the s-composite slot-thingi via ebay for aprox. 10 EUR + shipping. As the Scart signal was kind of crappy, the cause might be the 2§ adapter ;o), the s-composite works fine for me. THe Resolution kind of sucked as it was standard PAL. Video was fine, everthing else... well, at least a got a good reason to get myself a LCD... finally!

[geekyhawkes]

Viking i will report back, im pretty commited now to going for the newer hardware.  As far as the 9500, i was just thinking about going for the slightly higher spec card, but having looked more closely at the setup i think heat is going to be my enemy so im going to roll with the suggested processor and the onboard graphics.  I will report back as to how the system performs when i get it together and running.