Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler HTPC

I've been consistently nodding my head at Adrien's posts in this thread. Or nodding off. I forget.

We have a PC co-located with the TV. Once upon a time, I had visions of it replacing my CD changer, DVD player and satellite box.

I did laboriously rip all my CD's, so I got 1 out of 3, which actually makes me pretty happy.

The user interface and connectivity issues for the other two uses ultimately made me decide that stand-alone devices remain "better" for me and our family.

But I am VERY happy to have the PC there, because then I can stream web content to the TV ad-hoc, and also surf the web while I am watching TV (I do have a separate monitor besides the TV display).

Yeah. I have a tendency to be long winded. I get paid by the word and not by the post, like some other folks ...

Not at all!

Wait, you're getting paid?!?!

Years ago, I built a mATX desktop which has now essentially become my HTPC.

It has:
Gigabyte geforce 6300igp mobo?
Athlon 64 x2 running at 2.9ghz and ~60w TDP
2 raptor 74gb hard drives in RAID 0
1TB media drive
8800GTS 320MB video card
Plextor short depth dvd burner (hardly ever use)
Antec 550w PSU

I have it connected to my tv with a RGB cable and with 3.5mm to rca cables for audio to my AVR.

As it is, it can play most anything up to 720P and the audio quality is "ok" However, I've been looking to upgrade it some so that it will be able to play 1080P and HD audio codecs without dropping frames all over. During this research I learned that most all the Radeon 5 series cards can do 1080P video and (IIRC) pass HD audio codecs over the hdmi connection. The nVidia 4 series I believe can do the same thing but I prefer the Radeons for this generation. I may be wrong about the HD audio part but I know they can somehow pass audio over HDMI.

I'm looking for a Radeon 5750 to go on sale as it is a bit faster than my 8800gts (5670 is about on par for 3D) for the light gaming I do and it uses ~1/4 the power of my current card.

Pedantic

Then build away and ignore us. I get to play with computers all day long at work. That satisfies my itch.

My 2

The intel Core i3s & i5s will pass the HD audio codecs w/bitstreaming and 1080P natively with onboard sound and video.. If your thurs 1 hour shown and Sports are all on the networks get an HDHomerun dual tuner (OTA or QAM), if protected cable the Ceton.

With the above, W7 MCE and a software Bluray player (TMT3 for me), your good to go. Also Hulu and Netflix streaming, commercial skipping, DVR, music, photos and the rest.

The other piece of the puzzle is ripped Blurays, Need software, one is AnyDVD HD and lots of drive space. avg 40GB per movie.

For a great setup I recommend the above with a SSD for the OS(Guides and menus snap alot quicker, startup quicker) another drive for recorded TV, 4-8gb RAM and a server for the Bluray rips. I'm up to 16.6TB on my BR W7 Movie server(BR & DVD), and 6TB on my WHS for Recorded TV, Data, photos, music and Squeezebox music server.

All my gear including Servers, HTPCs, Extenders, Receiver, Whole House AUdio Server and Amps, eTc are in a rack across the house from my viewing area. That helps with alot with all the cases and gear.

Avoid a lot of third party software and hacks on HTPC for reliability.

My cable boxes are gone. All HTPCs and extenders 100% of the time.

I love my HTPC.
Jeff

23TB of storage?! WOW! How big a SSD do you need for the OS and such? Some day I'd like to swap the raptors in mine for a SSD and add another 2TB or so media drive. My little case only has room for 3 3.5" hard drives so I have to prioritize a bit more.

During my research I found that the core i3 was the best platform at the moment if you wanted to build one from scratch. However, the i5 seemed to be a better compromise if you needed to transcode video as well.

I've got an intel 40GB for my OS, seen 32/40s for $69/$79 last couple weeks. I do commercial Skip processing and well for the extra couple dollars and they had just come out, and wanted studder free Bluray ray for sure, there were not reviews to read at that time. I went with the "5" 650.

Also to not take a drive space, I used double sided tape and mounted my SSD OS drive on top of my PS.

With all my storage in the rack, I got Norco hot swap cases so I wouldn't have to pull a case out of the rack to add or change a hard drive. At $110 / 2TB, I just add as needed. Actually I think I have about 3.5 TB free right now on the movie server and 3 TB on the WHS. I just buy them when they are on sale.

Waiting for 3 TB drives cheap, should be soon!

For everyone that has Windows: 2005, Vista, W7, Media Center is built in. Buy a $25 tuner for a test and check out the TV interface as a DVR ! I know we are all different with different likes and wants, but I would never go back to the Cable DVR and with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, DVD, Bluray, Music, Photos ...well (I know, I'm sortof a fanboy)

I already have a PC that can handle doubling as a HTPC, so my only cost is really for the Ceton card, and to run ethernet if wireless isn't going to cut it.

So I'm looking at $400-500 instead of $10/mo.

This is one of the same reasons I'm considering OOMA. $200 to get free phone service vs. ~$25 a month Vonage is up to now.