Unbelievably low spec multimedia PC?? Viability?

[jgrabham]

P3 700MHZ
Some old Nvidia card which has an svideo output
384MB RAM
DVD ROM drive


If I stick xubuntu on it, and some decent multimedia software, then shove a couple of big HDDs, how viable would it be to use as a file server, as well as hooking it up to my TV, and watching DVDs/videos stored on the HDDs?

[n3tfury]

svideo? anything less than component is going to be rough viewing, imo.

[maagimies]

Well, the specs are enough for video decompression, and the NVidia will show it smooth with hardware overlay.
I'd bump up the ram to 512 though.
It should be nice.

[jgrabham]

I'd bump up the ram to 512 though.


I would, but Id have to but a 256 module, I only have 3 slots; I have a load of 128 modules


Oh, and I just checked, the video card has 64MB =]

[PatrickMay16]

My brother was using a Celeron 733MHz computer for this job a year ago. I noticed that the video got choppy in some places, so in this case I would suggest looking for a faster processor.

[regomodo]

wow. Unbelievably slow?! Hardly. I use a 440Hz laptop with 2MB of vram for day to day use when moving about. It can play dvds and x264 avis. DVDs a touch choppy though. It hates break and youtube though.

You may struggle using it for all those jobs you want though. I think it may even struggle just using a tv-card with it.

Personally i would use it as a fileserver, a caching proxy and a firewall but that's my choice

This card will decode tv and allow you to use apps at the same time with a 800Mhz cpu but that's in windows. Should be better in linux

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_novatpci.html

It's ubuntu compatible from 6.1 according to efficientpc.co.uk

[happy-and-lost]

Get more RAM and a new graphics card off ebuyer, and I don't see why not.

[Judo]

The CPU is easily enough for DVD playback, and probably Xvid/DivX. You won't be able to play h.264, but you probably won't need its compression with some large hard drive(s).

It looks good to me. The only thing you need to worry about is the CPU. The rest should be more than enough.

[jgrabham]

New CPU shouldnt be too expensive, essentially what Im trying to is justify the 200w Id be wasting just keeping it as a file server :]

[ShadowVlican]

good luck playing h.264 material with soft styled subs (like the latest anime encodes from KAA)

though you should have no problems playing SD xvids and maybe even h.264

[Artemis3]

Just ignore h.264; that machine is strong enough even for Ubuntu :P
Gutsy Desktop (live) CD runs fine with 320MiB of ram.

But if its only serving, you don't even need that much horsepower ;)

Playback will be just fine except for h.264, but that codec is insane on cpu which is why most people still avoid it. All fansubbers i know only offer h.264 as an alternative, they still don't dare take out xvid/divx. I say h.264 is a waste of time unless you want HDTV (hires) quality.

Softsubs are not cpu intensive unless you let the player interpret colors and such...

[teet]

If you're not going to be doing much with this machine you may want to try fluxbox instead of xfce. It would save you a few megabytes of RAM.

If the machine is too slow, you may want to give a lighter linux distro a shot (e.g. damn small linux or puppy linux). I think that some of these "lighter" distros still use the 2.4 linux kernel which makes them better for slower machines.

-teet