I have been researching since I found this site and I am ready to buy my equipment. If someone could please check out the list of hardware that I have decided to get to make sure that I am not making a huge mistake. Thanks for any pointer and/or insight in advance.

Hauppauge PVR-250
Micro Star International MSI 651M-L
1 gig DDR SDRAM
Intel Celeron D 2.93 gigs
Ultra ATA-100 320 gig
NEC ND3550A / 16x8x16x DVD+RW / 16x6x16x DVD-RW / 8x DVD+R DL / 6x DVD-R
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500 AGP 8x 256 MB DVI Svideo

d

You would probably get more responses if you told us what you're going to do. i.e. what are your requirements and expectations? HDTV or SD? If you want HD, you would need an HD tuner and maybe a bigger processor. If you are going SD, then you're wasting RAM and CPU with this.
DVI is "iffy", to an HD set. Doesn't work in all cases, and you may need another $100 for a VGA/Component converter.

I'd also say that you're lacking a remote and/or IR keyboard.

BTW, if you're not going HD, and you see yourself buying an HD set within the next 2 yrs, you are making a huge mistake. IMO.

You may also want to wait a few days before ordering. AMD cut there CPU prices drastically today and it will take a few days for all the retailers to reflect the changes.

http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/Brand ... tegory=343

Even if you don't get an amd this will shake up the pricing of all CPUs

Example
AMD Athlon64 X2 3800 $169 A week ago this CPU was going for $300

_________________
Backend System
XP2400
Nforce2 Abit NF7-S ver2
Intergrated nvidia sound and network
Nvidia 6200 DVI out to Projector
multiple drives using LVM
PVR - 500

[quote]You would probably get more responses if you told us what you're going to do. i.e. what are your requirements and expectations? HDTV or SD? If you want HD, you would need an HD tuner and maybe a bigger processor. If you are going SD, then you're wasting RAM and CPU with this.
DVI is "iffy", to an HD set. Doesn't work in all cases, and you may need another $100 for a VGA/Component converter.

I'd also say that you're lacking a remote and/or IR keyboard.

BTW, if you're not going HD, and you see yourself buying an HD set within the next 2 yrs, you are making a huge mistake. IMO.[/quote]

For the time being I am going SD with HD in the future at which time I will add an HD tuner. I expect to be able to watch live TV and record another program while I am doing so. I also forgot to put in the list that I am getting 2 PVR-350s. I didn't know that DVI was "iffy", couldn't I use the S-Video on the Nvidia card if I were to go with HD in the future. I also believe that the PVR-350 comes with a remote and I failed to list it. Thanks for your insight.

d

Nah, the PVR-250 should cover that, just so long as roontoon gets a Model 980. No reason to get 2 PVR-350's (unless they're actually cheaper than the 250s) since you can only use one output.

I pretty much agree on all the other counts, for SDTV you could also save a few more by scalling back the video card slightly the FX5200's work just fine and should be a bit cheaper.

Looks like that motherboard is an older socket 478 model, and while I'm not aware of any issues with the SIS chipset, I usually recommend the Intel chipsets for Intel CPUs.

Have you seen the hardware pages on the wiki?

Nope.

If we had a "top 10 signs that you aren't watching HDTV on your HDTV"

#10 You still see black bars on ER.
..
#5 Your wife rolls her eyes when you try to convince yourself that it's really really great.
..
#1 It's connected via S-Video!

Yup... that is where I found this motherboard.http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=MotherBoards

Hey I would be the first to tell ya I don't know squat about HDTV or how to get the signial to the box