I want to build a home stereo in a PC: A nice black case, DVD / CD-rom drives, FM tuner, TV tuner optional, big HD for lots of MP3's, and a video card with composite and S-Video out so I can use the TV as a monitor. I have a license of BE 5 Pro, and would like to use it on this machine. My question is this: what hardware and software would you recommend to accomplish this? How fast of CPU is needed to play DVD movies in Be? Will any DVD drive work and what software is needed to play DVD's? Are there any FM tuner cards that work with Be? Are there any VGA cards with composite out that work with Be? etc., etc.. Any suggestions appreciated! -Farren

Hi Farren, Can't help you out with a big list, but I had the same sort of idea, but came across a few problems I thought I'd share (any solutions please contact me)...: - I use a monitor as the screen, not the TV so a Happugauge WinTV was good enough for me. I think some new ones have video output - Make sure your video card can handle video overlays, WITH the driver available in BeOs. There is a DVD program for BeOs (check www.bebits.com and search for DVD), however if you don't have video overlay available in the card AND the driver it runs too slow. (I have a Savage4 card, overlay in Windows, no video overlay in BeOs....bummer). - Never managed to get the WinTV FM tuner to work in BeOs...works in Windows, however there is a program on BeBits called BeRadio for this. - for VCD's first go to BeBits, look for the VCD program and go to the VCD homepage, check your drive is compatible with a RAW interface, I have a Ricoh MP9060A drive...no VCD compatibility for me in BeOs..) - Black case? I got an IBM Aptiva which looks very nice, though I've swapped out the motherboard for more speed recently. Make sure you've got a quiet fan, thats the most important thing, spraypaint can fix everything else. - lastly go here http://perso.club-internet.fr/farzeno/firmware/ and make sure your DVD drive has a patch to allow it to work on any region before purchasing, otherwise you may get stranded on the wrong region when your 5 region changes are used up.....guess what happened to me!! Phil

goto http://www.frizbe.net and look at the hardware compatability lists. They also build Be systems there.

If you get any Bt848/878 based TV tuner that has an FM Tuner, it will work under BeOS. You just change the 'locale' in Media Preferences, to FM Tuner, then select the station. Works fine for me.