Casetronic Travla C137 Review

[rampy]

You can comment, or ask questions, etc about BYOPVR's Review of the Casetronic Travla C137

Coming soon: Review of the Via M10000, an quick look at PVR350  + SageTV,  and some other cool DIY PVR goodness that we have up our sleeves.

rampy

[Edited on 5/21/04 by rampy]

[Edited on 7/14/04 by rampy]

[Anonymous]

Good review.  I also have the  C137 with a pvr-350 and full size hard drive and my experiences were similar.

Additional PROs: the C137 comes with big bag of extra screws.

Additional CONs: some PSU fan details.  I'm using a fan-mate set to about 5V, as 7V was still too noisy.  Now the noise level is "good" but not "great".  With a full sized HD and pvr-350 cooling the motherboard/PSU isn't a concern - cooling the HD and pvr-350 is!  If only Pabst made a 40x40x10mm fan...

[Anonymous]

What was the OS that was installed on the HHD?

[rampy]

What was the OS that was installed on the HHD?

HHD? you lost me.. you mean HD?

I installed windoze XP Pro  (I just looked and I didn't mention it... guess I didn't think it was needed info... I guessed wrong =)  ) the PVR software was SageTV 2.0_19 with the latest sun JRE...

thanks for checking out the review...

rampy

[Anonymous]

Awesome.. that's what I meant ... Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Hi!

Thanks for a good review. I am looking for a case to build my own PVR where I want to use a LCD panel.  The LCP panel will be something like the Crystalfontz 632 serial LCD (108mm x 43mm, and its 20 mm thin). Do you know if this panel will fit in the case (on the front)? The rest of the components will be the same as yours, but the motherboard is EPIA MII12000.

Thomas

[rampy]

Hi!

Thanks for a good review. I am looking for a case to build my own PVR where I want to use a LCD panel.  The LCP panel will be something like the Crystalfontz 632 serial LCD (108mm x 43mm, and its 20 mm thin). Do you know if this panel will fit in the case (on the front)? The rest of the components will be the same as yours, but the motherboard is EPIA MII12000.

Thomas

Hi thomas,

The case was a loaner, so I don't have it anymore to take a closer look.  Where on the front where you thinking of mounting it/and how?  

There's only really teh slot for the slimline optical drive,  although i don't know how tall that is in mm's to know if your LCD woudl fit or not...  (either way you'd probably have to break out the dremel to customize the fit properly =) )

sorry I couldn't be of more help...  I'm sure you could get one in there somewhere, but you'd seemingly have to cut the case (perhaps where the compact flash slot would be, could be a good place (again you'd need to dremel though, and make sure it didn't interefere w/powersupply depending on the internal config you choose)

good luck!

rampy

[Anonymous]

Great review!

My question is, did you use the S-Video out on the PVR-350 or did you use the S-Video out on the Via m1K?

Thanks

Fritz

[rampy]

Great review!

My question is, did you use the S-Video out on the PVR-350 or did you use the S-Video out on the Via m1K?

Thanks

Fritz

 A little of both... but i primarily use the pvr350's tv out via sageTV for the most part because it's a little sharper/clearer than the m10k's, and the mpeg decoder helps with the heavy lifting...  (Although it does restrict me from being able to play divx or DVD's -- can't do that with pvr350's tv out)

rampy

[Anonymous]

Hi Rampy  -

Thanks for the excellent & detailed review.  I used it to put together a similar system.  I'm using the C158 case though.  No problems with any fits.  I think there may be a little more functional space -  I get a CF reader under the slim DVD/CDRW in addition to the 3.5" drive.

I do have a problem though.  I'm seeing very high cpu usage (>=70%) anytime winTV2000 is running.  I was expecting this to be a low cost operation.   I recall seeing a post somewhere re. a fix for this but I haven't been able to refind it.  I'm still setting this up using the monitor out on the M10k.   I don't have a handy TV (in my office) to see if the problem disappears when driving s-video only.

^^

VIA EPIA M10000 | HAUPPAUGE PVR 350 | MX ATA 200GB | SAMSUNG CDRW/DVD | 256MB | XP PRO | TRAVLA C158-90W

btw you can get a cheap & compact board-based slim ata adapter at CaseOutlet for $4 - sweet!

[rampy]

hmmm... well, you could try this registry tweak here to tell the intervideo decoder to use a hardware decoder/accellerator if present....   I do talk about  cpu usage and m10k in this review

that's all I've got =)

rampy

[omri]

hi rampy

thanx for a great article.
i was wondering about the costs...
it seems that the total cost is more then 600$ (with a nice case..)
am i right? is there a way to lower costs

what do you suggest to do if i want to add my one software inside?

thanx in adv.
omrison

[rampy]

hi rampy

thanx for a great article.
i was wondering about the costs...
it seems that the total cost is more then 600$ (with a nice case..)
am i right? is there a way to lower costs

what do you suggest to do if i want to add my one software inside?

thanx in adv.
omrison

Well, certainly...  I think if you're trying to balance cost with style you might go in a totally different direction.

There's a ton of ways to skin the DIY PVR / HTPC depending on what you want to do... quick example:

2n uses an existing pc, runs some network wire, uses free software, and a Media MVP  (which is on clearance at radio shacks around the us for 40 bucks!)  But that doesn't work/fit for everyone as it has some limitations-- DVD's won't play that way and non TV card related content can be a pain as it mostly does mpeg2 and mp3's...  but it is cheap, quiet, small, and better looking than a honking PC case.

What I suggest is you start a new thread that outlines what you have, what you want to do, some more details (standard definition TV, video source i.e. digital cable/analog cable/satellite/antena)

So start that thread and i'm sure the helpful folks can point you to either existing projects that are cheap(er) or recommend budget (but good!) components/approaches...

rampy

[xxnonamexx]

This is great work. I like it alot. My question is what was the total cost in this? Also are you able to record 2 shows at a time? I am planning on building but looking to keep costs somewhat lower. Any suggestions?
SilverStone Lascala SST-LC11-300 HTPC Case, 300W PSU, Silver $150
AMD Athlon 64 3500+, $230
Zalman CNPS7000B-Cu Copper CPU Fan Intel 478, AMD 754/939/940 $37
MSI K8NGM2-FID, AMD 64, Socket 939, nForce430/6150, 4GB, MATX $85
2GB DDR SDRAM DIMM $150
Ultra Series 250GB Hard Drive 7200RPM, Internal, SATA/150 $150
Panasonic UJ-845-B Slim Slot Load 8X DVD+-RW Super-Multi Drive $140
Beyond TV and Dual-Tuner Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500 MCE Kit (PCI) $200
This is over $1,000 There has to be a cheaper setup to gain the same experience I am trying to accomplish which is to  record 2 shows at a time and burn to a DVD. Any other ideas to keep costs lower. Thanks I love the beyond TV kit I am trying to build around it. But I am open to other suggestions.

[Mike]

I know I need a tray loading dvd burnwer