Home Theatre PC's

sdcfan18

I've seen some cool looking HTPC's on the various sites, but have just thought about making one. Although I'm not a computer genius, I have no problem building a PC from the ground up. I assume that HTPC's are similar. To be honest, I have no idea what a HTPC does. I assume that is serves as a Media Server holding movies and songs, a DVD player (and BluRay too I guess), a PVR. Anything else? I have Bell Satilite here in Canada. Can a HTPC be a Sat receiver too? I wouldn't think so.

Does anyone know of any sites that have lots of info on HTPC's? As you can see, the more info the better. I also would appreciate some sites that sell parts including cases.

Thanks in advance.

polktiger

Get your read on...

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=26

newegg can run some good specials if you are patient.

ZOOPDOOP22

When building a home theatre PC I would recommend a case that can hold as many sata drives as you can get. Load it up with 1-1.5 tb disks if you need to. I think now you can get a good price on a new quadcore i7 chip at newegg of course.

There is also a faster and more expensive one here. I'm not sure about your budget.. If your going to build a computer now then you should use the newest i7 quadcore. It uses trichannel ddr3 ram. Faster quadcores are perfect for encoding.

You could get a video card that has a video in.. I'm sure newegg has a much nicer selection but I have not the time to look now.

Also you want wifi 802.11n. Blu-ray if you want. Make sure to calculate out the proper power needs..

Face

The only thing that hasn't fully been worked out yet is decoding the new HD audio formats. There are 1 or 2 cards that claim to be able to do it, but are troublesome for most. I'm sure it will be resolved in the next few months.

unc2701

check out MythTV. My recommendation is to split the frontend (playing) and the backend(recording/storage).

For the frontend, look for mini-ITX and low power solutions. Figure out how much processor you need to playback the media you have in mind and scale everything back as much as possible: Less heat, lower fan speeds, less noise. Look at running this frontend off of a solid state drive or even a USB drive.

For the backend, this is where you need your power. The bigass case stuffed full of SATA's and expensive capture cards. Stuff this in a closet where the spinning drives and fan noise isn't going to bug you.

sdcfan18

Thanks for the info folks, this is great. I have what I want worked out in my head, now just need to find the parts to do it. My receiver does the audio decoding, so that isn't a problem. Keep them coming!

unc2701

Actually, the cheapest entry into HTPC is an old XBOX. I picked one up for $20, throw in about $15 to do the splintercell hack, then load up XBMC. It DOES NOT do any recording, but is perfect for playback of DVD rips, can attach to your iTunes, windows shares, you name it. My wife is even willing to use it.

Lotsa info here:
http://lifehacker.com/search/xbmc/

Tutorial for the hacking here:
http://lifehacker.com/299809/transform-your-classic-xbox-into-a-killer-media-center

Get a HD dongle for the XBOX with digital out and it even does pretty good playback of lossless audio.

Serendipity

Face wrote: »

The only thing that hasn't fully been worked out yet is decoding the new HD audio formats. There are 1 or 2 cards that claim to be able to do it, but are troublesome for most. I'm sure it will be resolved in the next few months.

My HTPC can pass them through 7.1 analog out to a pre/pro or AVR.

Face

Yes, but is it a 7.1 HD Audio format?

unc2701

I think auzentech makes one?

To be honest, I don't understand the appeal there. HTPC's are largely about convenience, not quality. My XBMC xbox has a bunch of TV shows ripped on it. If there's nothing on TV or I'm working out, I can catch up on last season's Mad Men or Dexter or whatever else. Decent rips, 2 channel. My wife uses it the same way- she has to have TV on to fall asleep, so I ripped all her Buffy DVD's. If I want to really watch a movie, it goes in the Oppo.

I am a little embarrassed to admit this, but I do have the audio running through a meridian 518. I needed a coax digital output and the Xbox dongle I have just does optical. Worst overkill ever.

gocard

I bought an HP slimline (I think the newer Dell slimlines look good as HTPCs too) to use as an HTPC. I keep my media on a separate computer and stream it from there. I threw in a blu-ray/hd-dvd drive, and it basically handles everything I need: blu-ray, hd-dvd, dvd, streaming media, internet content (hulu.com, abc.com, etc.), tivo, and so on. It has HDMI out, and the software that came with my drive lets me output in 5.1 surround (I think it can handle 7.1, but I only have 5.1 speakers. If not, I'm sure there will be a software update by the time I feel the need to add 2 more speakers.).

Since I use a separate computer to stream from, I can throw a ton of HDs in that one, and so I'm planning on backing up my DVD collection uncompressed (so there's no decline in quality) and streaming it. The main reason I went this route is that I can watch pretty much anything I want without worrying about whether my player can support it, and without having to pop in a disc (unless I'm watching blu-ray)

manman

unc2701 wrote: »

Get a HD dongle for the XBOX with digital out and it even does pretty good playback of lossless audio.

What kind of lossless audio are you talking about? Like a ripped blu-ray or something? I didn't think you could pass those lossless audio tracks over optical because of bandwidth restriction or something.

Anyway, for HD optical formats the xbox doesn't work (unless there have been some advancements I missed), but for everything else I totally agree on this. My xbox is one of the most useful piece of electronics in my house. i can watch ripped movies/tv shows, play almost any game of any of the old console systems, and much more.

Face

Yes, I was referring to lossless audio tracks from Blu Ray or HD DVD's.

ASUS currently makes a card, but it is troublesome for most. I'm also having handshake problems between my computer and my receiver and TV, so it appears I'm stuck with DVI for the time being anyway.

unc2701

in response to manman: CD Audio only- in that post i wasn't talking about High Def formats.

Do you use XBMC or something else?

Serendipity

Face wrote: »

Yes, but is it a 7.1 HD Audio format?

I'm pretty sure it does.

Serendipity

Face wrote: »

Yes, I was referring to lossless audio tracks from Blu Ray or HD DVD's.

ASUS currently makes a card, but it is troublesome for most. I'm also having handshake problems between my computer and my receiver and TV, so it appears I'm stuck with DVI for the time being anyway.

With regards to HD content -

I tried this with my 34XBR960 and to my surprise, it passed the audio over HDMI. I always had it connected via DVI to a computer monitor but I didn't know it could do audio over HDMI too!!

manman

Ah, gotcha. I use XBMC too, great app.

I haven't seen the splintercell hack though. Back when I was into console modding I tried the few software based hacks that were out, but at the time they had some limitations, so I just ended up going with a chip. I had a really nice one that I built up during my learning process way back in the day. I put so much time into it, painted it, did all those led mods and stuff, haha. Then one day I was stupid and left it in my car overnight while staying at my gf's house... a couple of broken windows later, I never saw it again... I didn't care about losing the xbox itself so much, just all the work I put into it. I finally got around to building a new one about a year and a half ago... it's never leaving my house!

Serendipity

If I understand correctly you can't pass lossless audio formats via optical due to content protection, so that's why when I have my HTPC hooked up via optical I get 48KHz on the AVR but with my DVD-Audio player I get full resolution audio via analog.