Questions about a new sound room computer

[sleepingbeauty]

We have been asked to buy a new computer for the sound room for our church. We have just bought a prosonus board. I am not a sound person so I have no idea about what that entails but I have been told it has a firewire output to control the board. We are planning to use the old sound room laptop to connect to the prosonus and control it.

So we get to buy a new computer to connect to display the slides etc. Here is our first cut at the specs:

[*]System computer

- Computer: i7-8xx or faster CPU, 8GB RAM DDR3, 1Tb Hard drive,
- 17” – 20” LCD/LED HD monitor
- Graphic card: Nvidea brand, 1GB, full-height PCI, full DirectX 9 support, Dual DVI w/ TV-out, at least 2 independent displays
- Operating system: Windows 7 Pro or better
- Optical drives: 1 blu-ray reader/DVD writer combo, 1 DVD writer
- Wireless and Ethernet
- Keyboard and Mouse
- Sound card
- IEEE 1394 interface card & cable included
- 19 in 1 media card reader
- Room for two additional drives (SSD or blu-ray or DVD)
- Room for second video card (PCI-E slot)

I have some questions related to how well this system will suit us.

1. Is it too much system for a church with about 100 people.
2. We were talking about a SSD or Hybrid for the hard drive, does anyone have any suggestions?
3. Can you see any places to save ourselves some money?
4. I read on the forums somewhere that the nVidia video cards work best with mediashout, is that still true?
5. Our budget is $1200, do these specs look like they will come in under that?

Thanks for your help and God bless,
Connie

[[Admin] osborn4]

Originally Posted by sleepingbeauty

Is it too much system for a church with about 100 people.

Depends on what you want to do. Do you do a lot of video? or is it mostly static pictures and text?

Originally Posted by sleepingbeauty

We were talking about a SSD or Hybrid for the hard drive, does anyone have any suggestions?

If you're trying to save money, don't. The price on these will be coming down, but I don't think they are where they need to be yet. And I don't think it would be a good use of the money. I'm not sure what gains you would see from this other than a faster boot time. But, again, it depends on what else you'll be doing with this.

Originally Posted by sleepingbeauty

Can you see any places to save ourselves some money?

I don't think the i7 processor is needed. The i5 and the i7 are basically the same speed, but the i7 includes enterprise level controls that smaller organizations wouldn't benefit from.

You don't need Windows 7 Pro unless you need to join a Windows domain. If you don't run a Windows domain, Windows 7 Home Premium should be fine. Get the 64-bit version if MediaShout will support it.

Do you need the blu-ray? How much optical media do you use anymore? What is the resolution of your projectors?

I don't know how much RAM MediaShout needs, but unless you're doing something other than MediaShout, you may want to start with 4 gig and make sure you can expand.

Originally Posted by sleepingbeauty

I read on the forums somewhere that the nVidia video cards work best with mediashout, is that still true?

I can't comment on that, except that nVidia's are generally preferred for many applications.

Originally Posted by sleepingbeauty

Our budget is $1200, do these specs look like they will come in under that?

I've not priced out a machine in a long time. Without the blu-ray and the ssd or hybrid, you should be fine.

[David Burton]

OK, I play a Media Shout video jockey on Sundays

My first question to you would be, 'what does your worship leaders want to do now and in the near future?'

Our new pastor asked for things that we could not do with Sunday Plus and that is why we went to Media Shout.

What you are buying for, is Media Shout 5 not 4, which should be in a 1 year or so, hopefully. So the i5 or i7 core with the 8 gig of ram would be good. The 1T hard drive, never have too much drive. A standard drive is fine.

Media Shout plays great in Win 7 64 and we have Win 7 Pro on an AMD Dual Core 4400 with 4 gig of ram with out any problem in standard def. Projector does not do high def so no need.

Video card is good.

The Blu ray is nice for 20 gig back ups, and for playing what is out there.

You have a system that should be good for several and that is what you are buying for.

[sleepingbeauty]

Thanks David Burton and osborn4, We are going to be buying soon. Yay!! I love buying. We have a system configured through Dell. But we have some Dell fans and some not Dell fans, so we are going to be waiting until we get that resolved.

Thanks,
Connie

[David Burton]

One place to look is at the Media Shout web site. They have sales on fully equipped computers already loaded with Media Shout ver 4 and set to go.
You might save money that way.
Also on the operators monitor, 20 or larger 16 X 9 ( high def) monitor, the only way to go.

[sleepingbeauty]

I think we already have licenses for MediaShout. We only have a small spot available for the screen. Is it worth revising out plans. I think we can fit a 20" screen max. As well what is the deal with the 16x9. I don't think I have seen monitors advertised as such.

Connie

[David Burton]

The 16 X 9 monitors are the 'hi def shaped' monitors that they sale now. It gives more roomto work with.

[TVAN]

Another thing to consider is adding a second small monitor that clones what is displayed on the projectors (using a VGA splitter).

Whether this is helpful or not is totally dependent on your installation and crew. In our install, our screens are not elevated all that high above the congregation and the booth is in back of the main seating area. All it takes is one 6' 7" person to come in late and stand right in front of the booth while you are quickly stepping thru some scripture at one verse per slide. Oops, hosed that cue. I know that MediaShout has the current/next viewers, but these are on the small side if you don't have a very big control monitor.

This is also dependent on the age of your volunteers, as the eyesight inevitably degrades, on go the reading glasses. If I were 20, I could probably make out the text on the cue thumbnails, but now that I'm 55......not so much. We have volunteers from age 13 to 70, so some appreciate the boost.

I consider this second monitor the "sound booth confidence monitor" (as opposed to the stage confidence monitor). I hooked ours to my switcher, so with a touch of a button, I can see what is on the stage confidence monitor without turning around to look.

One final benefit to us is viewing final checks on a newly developed presentation without turning on the projectors and running up time on the lamps. I've set this monitor's brightness/contrast/color settings to match our projectors so I'm confident that WYSIWYG. Very helpful when testing out some new fonts or backgrounds for readability.

Again, depending on your situation, it might be unneeded. In our case, I wish I had thought about it in our planning stage to prevent a lot of rework on our part to add it later.

Hope this helps.

[matthewbeamish]

Thanks everyone for the input! I am the "media" ministry leader at the church sleepingbeauty attends, and I just want to let everyone know that we bought a PC and got it installed in time for last Sunday's service, and everything ran smoothly for the most part!

Once I return to Canada (I am away in South Africa), we will probably be looking into getting a VGA/HDMI matrix router, and getting MediaShout's stage display up and running (we already have a projector facing the back of the room, but it is feed off the input to the projector facing the front), and maybe a second monitor for "preview" purposes for the operator.

Thanks again for all the input!